


The Supernatural World of Vladimir and Viktor

by tiwaki



Series: An Apostle of the Lord [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-03-20 12:02:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 42
Words: 63,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13717287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiwaki/pseuds/tiwaki
Summary: The is the sequel to 'An Apostle of the Lord.'Pre-teens vampire Vladimir and dragon Viktor live with miracle-worker Eddie Timms. With friends like demon-hunting brothers Sam and Dean Winchester, the angel Castiel and denizens of Oz, their world will be anything but normal.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> One really needs to read 'An Apostle of the Lord,' to get a feel for the people and places at the start in this story. At least check the Afterword (chapter 40) of 'An Apostle of the Lord' to get a roster of characters.

Late in the morning, Sam Winchester and Castiel took the tunnel from Kansas to Eddie Timms’s Indiana barn. Eddie and the boys were already up, and Scraps with Captain Fyter had arrived.

Scraps was presenting Viktor with his own teddy bear, a gray one with brown button eyes, which she had promised Eddie was made totally of fire-proof materials. She flipped the bear over to show she had stitched on its back a black dragon wings pattern.

Vladimir insisted his should have fangs, so Scraps pulled out from her drawstring bag some white thread to stitch in white fangs on his bear. As she started on the bear, Captain Fyter took charge.

“Okay, men,” he told Vladimir and Viktor. “Today we are going to learn our first weapon, so present you claws!”

Vladimir and Viktor proudly held out their hands and extended their claws. The captain presented a handful of rocks and three stretch bands with a loop at each end.

“Here’s what we will do.” Captain Fyter took one of the bands and, with the palm of his left hand facing away from him, used his right hand to hook the loops over two fingers. Then he took a rock, put it against the pad the middle of the band, pulled back and let the rock fly into the air. It bounced off one of a row of empty bottles sitting on a bench.

“Slingshots!” exclaimed Sam.

Vladimir and Viktor eagerly armed themselves and shot rocks at the other bottles. “When you get good enough,” the captain added. “you will battle each other with these paint balls.” He showed them a clear bag full of green and pink half-inch spheres and a couple of goggles.

“Someday,” the captain explained to Eddie, Sam, and Castiel, “the stones and balls can be replaced with harpoon-tipped spheres that will inject dead man’s blood into vampires or the treatment for your witch-killing bullets for witches.”

Sam wanted to hang around to watch, and maybe even participate, but he had an appointment and climbed down the hatch in the barn that would take him to Eddie’s Tennessee barn to meet the elf Daniel.

Castiel followed Eddie into the house. They had a destination to go to themselves: Heaven -- the part of Heaven in which human souls resided and angels could not cross into. If their plan worked, Castiel would be the first angel to do so.

Eddie laid on the couch in the livingroom and closed his eyes. In less than a minute he asked Castiel if he could see the golden cord. Castiel could. The cord ran from Eddie’s body up and through the ceiling.

“We all have them but the living don’t see them. My core soul Timothy is at the other end. Just follow it as I make my connection.” In a moment Castiel saw Eddie’s spirit rise and follow the golden cord. He rose and followed Eddie.

There was not a sense of distance, as much as a sense of change of thought, and the form of a man appeared. One that looked much like Eddie but tall with curly brown hair and dressed in the robe of one who lived in Galilee two thousand years ago. With him, but less visible were figures of both sexes and many races of humans and beings somewhat other than human. Castiel remembered Eddie had said he was the latest of thousands of incarnations of this soul.

Stricter concentration revealed the golden cords. They connected each entity and each entity had more such cords that reached away and towards other souls and memories of those souls and towards the physical realm. His thought returned to Eddie and he noticed Eddie had several of the golden colds that led back to Earth. He figured they connected to Vladimir and Viktor, and probably the Winchesters. He followed where one cord led directly to him and that others led from him back to Earth, one of them to Dean Winchester, he sensed, and another to Sam Winchester. Could that mean when these humans finally died that his essence would continue with them even if he should lose his grace?

“Castiel, I want you to meet another past incarnation of mine,” he heard Eddie say. His thoughts returned to the central figure to see it was now a tall tanned woman with long black hair smiling pleasantly at him.

“This my Zoroastrian incarnation from ancient Persia. She was a recorder and librarian for the faith and is our primary link to the Hall of Records. That’s where all history of all souls and their incarnations are recorded. See if she can find Sam and Dean for you.”

“Call me Shebbeth,” the woman said and she led Castiel through an entrance into an elegant hall lined with shelves of books. “Of course there are no physical books. This just feels like there are because, during my life, that is how information was recorded. I imagine other incarnations would walk up to a computer instead and say, ‘Siri, take me to my former home in France.”

‘She retained her sense of humor,’ thought Castiel, imagining how she would have been in life.

They found the tome for Dean Wincheter right off and Castiel saw Dean outside the bunker playing an impromptu game of mumbly-peg with a dagger. Shebbeth pulled out a volume from nearby and opened it up for Castiel to see Sam in Tennessee, just now passing the “BEWARE OF THE FAIRIES” sign with the elf Daniel at his side. He decided to read along for a while.

“I don’t have the sensation that I’m about to be swarmed by ‘tinks’ this time,” Sam was saying.

“They’ve been informed this time that you are a ‘friendly,’” said Daniel. “You’ll be fine when we see them.”

As they progressed, Sam noticed the trees on either side began to be lined up at either side forming an archway over them. Soon the mountain began to rise up on either side and the trees were replaced with forest creeper, ferns, jewelweed and wild hydrangea. Once the mountain closed over them forming a tunnel, Sam could see light in the distance.

The passage ended at a large reflective pool under a mass of crossvine with huge red trumpet-like flowers from which the tinks emerged and flitted about, lighting up the area with the sparks they produced. At Sam and Daniel’s feet, stone steps led down into the pool and beyond.

“Follow me,” said Daniel as he walked down the steps. The surface of the pool did not respond as he walked down into it, and as Sam followed and his eyes went below the pool’s surface he realized it was not a pool of water at all. Above the men was just darkness and the passageway continued a short distance to its opening.

The first thing Sam noticed were that the tiny fairies – the ‘tinks’ as he knew them as – were fluttering about. He looked at the craggy wall behind him to see the lights in clusters all along the wall and above as far as he could see.

When his eyes adjusted, he noticed he was also on a walkway along the wall and that, as it extended in both directions, it curved up into the darkness. On the opposite side of the walkway, a low wall extended along its entire length. Beyond the wall was vast openness and in the distance, a spectacular view. Below, a bright landscape stretched in a slight curve from right to left and far into the darkness beyond. From Sam’s view it looked like an airliner view of the green, brown and blue patched surface of Earth that disappeared into darkness in four directions. Above and out front of them was a long rectangle of light.

“Ready for me to explain what you’re looking at?” asked Daniel.

“Yeah, I am.”

“Okay,” Daniel continued. “We are moving though space inside a planet-sized ship. From the inside it is shaped like a barrel that is rotating, causing a centrifugal pull that holds against it everything you see down there. The rectangle of light you see above is the mid-day view of a non-rotating cylinder on which only this side produces light. The side of the barrel rotates around the middle cylinder so the landscape lit up below will ride up into the darkness on the unlit side of the cylinder and back around to come into the light again from the other side. Day, night, day, night...”

Sam squeezed his eyes tightly shut, trying to wrap his mind around the image. “Okay, so the wall beside us is the top of the closed barrel and the bottom of the barrel is in the darkness straight across from us. Because the barrel spins the walk we are on is being pushed towards what appears to us to be the ground below us. And the ground we see down there is on the barrel’s inner side that presses outward, which to people down there seems like ‘down’ while the light-producing cylinder seems like ‘up.’ in the sky.”

“That’s it in a nutshell. And this whole thing floats somewhere out in outer space. It’s ‘barreling’ through space, you might say.” Daniel hoped Sam caught his pun.


	2. Chapter 2

“I never thought the magical realm would be like this,” Sam Winchester mused.

“That’s why we aren’t meeting with anyone this visit,” said the elf Daniel. “I knew you would need time to digest this. By the way, the passage we went through is like the tunnels between Edward Timms’ barns. You go in the same entrance, but you can come out through any of several exits. The next time we come, the exit will be somewhere in one of the kingdoms you see out there.”

“But, enough of that. We’re running short on time. I had another purpose. See that green rectangle down there, with the thin white border inside a green border and with a blue sea around it all?”

Sam followed Daniel’s finger out to the world below and spied it.

“That green rectangle is Oz,” Daniel said. “If you look closely in its middle you see a green glint now and then. That’s the Emerald City. With a telescope you can find a red glint of light at the bottom edge and that is Glinda’s estate.”

“Glinda the good witch?” asked Sam.

“Uh, no. Glinda the Good. Witches are bad.” Daniel said with some concern.

“I thought there were good witches and bad witches and Glinda was a good one, and I think Ozma, too.” Sam was remembering the Baum fictionalized stories of Oz.

“No, Queen Ozma has the throne because she is a fairy. Glinda is a dragon, a very powerful dragon living in human form. Very few know this about Glinda. Has she taken interest in the young dragon Viktor yet?”

Sam thought a moment. “I don’t think so.”

“There’s another thing you should know about Glinda. It’s the reason Edward Timms ended up owning the property in Tennessee where our portal lies. Back in the Dark Ages of Europe, in the Germanic area, was a kingdom called Quadlingen ruled by the dragon Glinda in human form as its queen and her husband King Erin. Erin is a past incarnation of Eddie That’s the link. Being human, Erin died after a century. Glinda also outlived their three human daughters.

“Come forward a thousand years to today. Edward Timms was granted by this Amazing Bob guy, a gift that nobody else has ever had: the ability as a living being to cross the veil into Heaven. That’s been a hard and fast rule in this universe: no living being shall be beyond the veil between this universe and Heaven without dying and leaving life forever.

“Right now, Eddie is visiting with his core soul Timothy. In Heaven. On the other side of the veil. When Glinda discovers this, everyone I know believe she will see it as a chance to bring her beloved Erin back to life to live forever in Oz.

“We in the magical realm would be happy for a reunion of Glinda and Erin. But our numerous magical realms all lie inside of this universe, and if the veil between the living and Heaven is opened by her attempt to reach her former husband, our leaders are seriously concerned that it will also open the veil that protects us from the rest of the universe. We cannot have that!”

“I understand what you’re saying,” said Sam. “Yeah, scary. So, you want me watching Eddie?”

“If you would,” replied Daniel. “Just as a contact to warn us, but we’d really appreciate it.”

Their time was up and Daniel led Sam back to Eddie’s Tennessee barn.

Sam returned to the Indiana barn in the middle of the Great Paint Ball Battle. He grabbed a lawn chair and dragged it up to Beau, who was outside the back woods observing the action in the woods that Sam himself could not see.

“You’re back!” said Beau. “I turned Vlad and Vik loose with their slingshots and paint balls at opposite ends of the back woods. It turns out neither of them has any sense of direction. I had go in twice to redirect one of them in the right direction to find the other. I’m going to have to work on that. They finally found each other, so, finally, the battle has begun.”

Sam sat down to await the results.

In the Hall of Records in the human sector of Heaven, Castiel had finished browsing. Shebbeth took him back to the soul cluster known as Timothy. “Say,” he asked her on the way back. “I want to find people to heal in my free time. Would these books tell who I could help that would do them the best good? I wouldn’t want to mess up somebody’s karma.”

“Sure!” said Shebbeth. “I would be happy to research for you.” She handed a report to Timothy.

Timothy looked over the report and then told Eddie about his next task. “Here is what we have learned: Blaine Grisnell will be robbing a convenience store three days from now. He is destined to kill the clerk and that will begin a life of crime that we believe we can prevent if Blaine has to deal with his act without the act actually happening. You have the skills to accomplish this.”

“This sounds like something I’m going to understand when I get there.” said Eddie. “Hey! Mammoth Cave is near there! Could I take the boys and still do it?”

“Eddie, we have full faith in what you can do.”

Castiel smiled and said, “Making your next miracle a family affair, Eddie?”

“If I can,” said Eddie. “So, did you like the Hall of Records?”

“Something interesting,” said Castiel. “I read Sam’s record as he and Daniel visited the magical realm. Did you know that you were Glinda the Good’s husband in a past life?”

“Huh?”

Castiel addressed the core soul. “Timothy, we need to visit with your incarnation King Erin of Quadlingen. Eddie, you know Glinda the Good is a thousands-year-old dragon?”

“No, I thought she was a ‘good witch.’

“It turns out there’s no such thing as a ‘good’ witch. She’s a dragon living in its human form.”

Eddie thought for a moment. “That explains a bit why she was interested in having a visit from my son Viktor. It bothered me that she hadn’t shown any interest in Vladimir. Actually, it still does.”

Timothy’s usual image changed to that of a thin man with fair skin and sweeping blonde hair. It was Erin. “So, you’ve just learned about me and Glinda. That’s why you have your property in Tennessee, you know. I died before Quadlingen was moved from Earth and merged with the Ozian complex of kingdoms. But I still follow my wife.” Erin held up the golden cords connected to him. “The largest cord follows my wife. The next three follow our three daughters who are currently in new incarnations.”

“I am aware Glinda has learned of Amazing Bob’s gift allowing you to cross the veil into Heaven and back. I do not believe she or anyone else totally understand what it means. Causing our reunion is strong in her mind and it saddens me. Even if she could break the veil, I am not interested in returning. I lived my life. Being here is my reward. I wish she understood.”

“Let’s head back, Castiel,” Eddie said. “If Beau and Scraps are still there I’m going to ask what they know.”

Eddie and Castiel returned to the Timms barn as Vladimir and Viktor charged triumphantly out of the woods. Beau brought them back to the barn to count paint splatters on their clothes.

Scraps walked around Vladimir, counting spots. “Five!”

Castiel did the same for Viktor. “Six! I guess Vladimir made more successful shots.”

Captain Fyter held up Vladimir’s hands, er, claws and named him winner. Scraps and Viktor danced around him in their excitement.

After the celebration, Eddie sent the boys into the house to wash up and throw their clothes into the laundry. He motioned Captain Fyter to the chairs.

“Beau, I have questions about Glinda and Erin.”

“I expected you would,” said Captain Fyter. He sat as Scraps plopped herself on the table beside him and sat as calmly as a patchwork girl could, legs swinging gently.

The captain, tugged at his boot until it swiveled. “First, I suppose I should tell you about myself.” He tugged again to pull the boot off. There was no foot. He showed Eddie that the boot was totally empty. So was his leg.


	3. Chapter 3

The Supernatural World of Vladimir and Viktor, Chapter 3

 

Eddie Timms and Sam Winchester had to let it sink in.

The metal man, Captain Beau Fyter had a metal boot with no foot in it, and a metal trouser leg with no leg in it. They studied the man himself.

He stood about six feet tall and was made completely of steel. The torso, arms and legs were visually a jacket and trousers. Under his hat, his hair was solid, not individual strands. His eyes, like Scraps’, did not see for him, but unlike Scraps’, they were inset, not buttons. Thin slats across his forehead and cheeks allowed movement of his face for emotional expressions. His mouth, like Scraps’, merely opened to let out a sound produced from somewhere inside.

His metal fingers had joints. So did his clothing at the shoulders, waist and knees. Again, thin metal slats allowed the joints to bend.

Vladimir and Viktor returned in fresh shorts and tees after washing up. Both looked in awe at Beau’s boot and leg.

“No machinery?” inquired Sam.

“I am a metal man, not a mechanical man,” said Beau. “I move by magic. I’m a soul in a empty metal container and am perfectly content being so.”

“So were you a human man before?” Sam asked. Vladimir and Viktor sat together in the next chair to hear, fully entranced. 

“Yes,” said Beau. “The woodcutter Hank Chopper and I both once had meat bodies. And both in turn were suitors for a servant girl named Nimmie Annie. The woman she worked for opposed her marriage to Hank and she went to the Witch of the East who conjured a spell to cause his axe to chopped him into pieces. As you both know, Ozians cannot die. If cut in two we would simply not be conscious until the two pieces were pressed back together. Hank’s meat pieces were scattered about and some were lost. His essence was put into a magic metal body.

“When I passed through with my troops and fell in love with the same girl, my sword was caused to chop me up and my parts were scattered in the same manner. And my essence is in this magic metal body.

“Ironically, someone took Nick’s and my meat parts they found and between the two had enough to piece together a third person, who Nimmie Annie married. Go figure...”

“The point of all of this is that in Oz they can make a metal shell and place the human essence in it. Glinda has asked for a new metal man shell to be made. Who do you think, who no longer has a human body, that Glinda would want to put into a metal one? Especially now that we know she may be able to reach her beloved deceased husband in Heaven.”

Sam, Castiel and Eddie knew: King Erin of Quadingen.

The conversation ended when Castiel answered his phone. “A call from Beryx and Anica’s” he said. “Monica says Beryx, Hank and Joseph were not around and some new arrivals had started trouble. A couple of them had just dragged Anica outdoors.”

“Sounds like its time for a cleansing at the Vam San,” said Sam. “Let’s get Dean and go help them out.”

Sam and Castiel disappeared with the bunker as their destination.

“Well, I’m going in to fix supper,” Eddie decided. “You boys play with Scraps and Captain Fyter until they leave for Oz. Then come in and wash up.”

The boys and the Ozians talked about paint balls and how cool it would be to have a metal body until Captain Fyter decided it was time to head home. He drew the letter ‘O’ and over it drew the letter ‘Z’ to signal Glinda’s monitor in the mirrored ballroom that they were ready to be brought back to Oz.

Scraps and Captain Fyter disappeared. And, a minute later, so did Vladimir and Viktor.

At the sanitarium in St. Louis, Anica had, indeed, been dragged outdoors by the new visitors and chained to the sturdy post that served as a support for a clothesline. Once they were sure she could not break the cuff on her wrist or the one around the post, they returned to the building to take over the residents inside. Without Beryx, Hank, or Joseph there, the other residents were uncertain of what to do.

Anica could not break her cuffs and could not lift herself up high enough to get the other cuff above the post. She was not in any danger, though. The intruders were gray-eyed east European vampires and assumed that, since she was also gray-eyed, she would be sensitive to the bright sun above. But, since being gifted by Amazing Bob, and unbeknownst to them, she wasn’t affected.

It was not long before the female of the group came out to check on Anica’s demise and gloat about their plans for the place. The woman’s long dress, long sleeves and shawl protected her from the sun.

“Bacon yet?” mocked the woman.

Anica held her long-sleeved arm over her face until the woman came close, then swung around and grabbed the woman’s arm. She pulled her arm behind her back and with her other hand ripped back her shawl. “No. How about you?”

Anica grabbed the woman’s hair and pulled her head back. “Look into the sun!” she commanded when they were eye-to-eye. “Feel them burn!”

The woman shrieked for help from inside the building but no one heard her. She had foolishly left without telling anyone she was out to taunt their victim. Her eyes sunk in and her face swelled and sizzled as if it had been doused with battery acid. Once she was weak and limp, Anica had her chance.

She pulled the body back to the post and with the woman’s shawl tied her by her neck to the post. With the additional height, Anica climbed up the woman’s dying body and thus was able to slip her cuff over the post top and chew the clothesline apart to drop down to the ground. She was just heading back to the building when Sam and Dean Winchester popped into view.

“Cas says you have an infestation,” Dean said. “We’re here for an extermination.”

“You are such angels!” said Anica. “I killed one and I think there are three more inside, gray-eyed vamps, so avert your eyes.”

Sam burst through the door at the back end of the lounge first and sensed the area for friend or foe. Dean came in next. And Anica last, shouting into the room, “Cleansing drill guys, you know the precedure!”

The few in the lounge stood with their backs to the wall and waited quietly.

“These are good,” said Sam.

Into the hall. “Two bad boys. He slashed the neck of one and Dean did the same to the other. A third, standing back against the wall like the other residents, pointed toward the other hallway and the Winchesters burst through the doors into the hall. Another resident, also with her back to the wall pointed to one of the rooms.

“One bad boy,” said Sam.

Dean pulled the door open and threw a circular saw blade at the dark form inside. The blade neatly sliced off its head. “Hey! It worked!” Dean said proudly.

When they returned to the cross hall, Hank and Joseph entered through the front door, with Monica behind them. “Pizza’s here!”

“Would you boys like to join us for supper?” Anica asked Dean and Sam sweetly. “Monica, dear, set us up in the lounge for pizza. Hank, would you and Joseph help with clean-up? We have three headless bodies to take to the incinerator downstairs. I’m going outside to bring in the fourth. Then we can eat.”

In the lounge the relieved residents flicked through the guides on their smart phones to plan the evening TV programs to watch while eating.

The Winchesters noticed during the meal that they could see into the dining room where, every once in a while, a resident drank a blue solution from a vial and placed the empty vial on the counter. They asked Monica what that was all about and she took them into the dining room. In the corner of the room was a set of shelves with coffee mugs with a resident’s name on each.

“Every afternoon,” she explained, “I fill the vials and put one in each cup. Everyone has to drink his vial of solution before bedtime.”

“But what is it?” Sam asked.

“Oh, you didn’t know. Professor Wogglebug concocted it. He discovered that vampire DNA causes their body to produce an enzyme that causes aggression and the irresistible urge for human blood. This stuff bonds with the enzyme and doesn’t allow it to function. The body still makes the enzyme, so we have to take the blue solution daily to keep the enzyme at bay. It’s the replacement for Eddie’s concoction and much more effective. Wogglebug is working on a solution for the chemicals that vampire bodies produce in their skin that he says causes skin burns from UV rays from the sun.” Monica drank from her vial for the day, and they returned to the lounge.

In Glinda’s palace ballroom, Captain Fyter popped though one of the mirrors with Scraps behind him. He headed out into the hallway.

Scraps was startled by a sound behind her and turned to see Vladimir and Viktor come through the same mirror. “What are you two doing here?”

The boys did not know.


	4. Chapter 4

“I need to get you two back home,” Scraps said to Vladimir and Viktor. She looked around to see who had called them through the mirror and saw nobody she could chew out for this folly.

“Oh, let them stay a few minutes,” said Glinda, just stepping into the ballroom. “I haven’t met Vladimir’s friend, Viktor, yet.” She led the boys down a hall and outside to her private gardens behind the palace. Scraps followed them and waited at the door. She trusted Glinda the Good -- she did -- but something inside her prompted her to watch the boys closely anyway.

In an open patch of rose quartz flagstones Glinda stopped and crouched down a distance from the boys and said, “I want you especially to see this, Viktor. I want to show you that I’m a dragon like you.”

Glinda held out her hand. Soon it grew and, as it grew, her nails turned to claws and her skin developed red scales – plate-sized scales. It became as large as a school bus.

“Oh!” said Viktor. “Vlad! I remember seeing dragons this huge! When I was tiny...” He climbed up and into Glinda’s paw. Of course, Vladimir followed his friend.

Glinda loosen her hair and pulled out the ribbons with her human hand. She also loosened the clothing about her neck and prepared for her next transformation. Her neck stretched and the hair pulled into her head. Eventually a huge dragon head as high as the palace itself leaned down over the boys. Fireballs, flashes of lightning, and ash swarmed around her head and smoke rose from her dragon nostrils. Her golden slitted eyes seemed to flash. And a thunder-like sound rumbled about her.

“She’s just like me!” Viktor told his friend. “Just like me!”

Slowly, Glinda returned to her human form. Her long hair fell back over her shoulders and, when she held the ribbons behind her head, her hair braided itself with the ribbons wrapped into the braids.

She walked the boys back to the ballroom. “I understand you are an orphan, Viktor,” she said. “Would you like a parent?”

“Oh, I have a parent,” replied Viktor. “Eddie is my daddy!”

“You mean Edward Timms adopted you?”

“No! He’s my daddy! Amazing Bob sent him my birth certificate from Brammerang.”

“Amazing Bob?”

“The Creator God of another universe,” both boys chimed together.

“Oh,” Glinda understood the situation. It stung a bit.

“Well, here we are in the ballroom. That’s the mirror you need to go through to get home.”

Vladimir and Viktor raced to the mirror she had pointed out and stepped through, waving back at her calling out, “Bye, Glinda! Bye, Scraps!”

Glinda looked over to see Scraps watching her. “You think I called them here. I didn’t. With no one in the ballroom to select, everyone in front of the symbol was transferred in. But I did take advantage of the situation. I didn’t know all the facts. I think I do now.”

Scraps patted her gently on her shoulder. “I gotta get back to Emerald City,” and she skipped up to one of the mirrors and smacked right into it. She stumbled about a bit and then lined up to go through the correct one.

“You did that on purpose for my benefit,” Glinda smirked.

Scraps turned around and pressed both thumbs against where ears would normally be and wiggled her fingers. “You’ll never know for sure,” she said, and leaped gracefully through the mirror.

A couple days later Eddie, with Vladimir and Viktor in the back seat of his red Jeep, arrived at the convenience store near Cave City, Kentucky. “This the one?” he asked Timothy.

“Yes it is,” Eddie heard. “Blaine Grisnell will arrive in an hour. His mind is on getting money. He will be in the expected frame of mind when he sees the store. Your plan will work. Even with the boys present. Be confident.”

Eddie took the boys into the convenience store. “A candy bar for each of us. Get me a Zero bar.” He smiled at the clerk behind the counter. “We’re going to Mammoth Cave. The boys are excited.”

“You look pretty excited about it, too,” she said, smiling back.

With the kids in the candy aisle, Eddie walked the store and grabbed three cartons of chocolate milk. As he walked he sent up a mist into the air and directed it to fog over the cameras

Eddie made his purchase and followed the boys to the door. “Okay, stay in the Jeep until the guy comes in the store. Then, if you can get into his truck, roll the windows down and stay hidden.”

Back in the store, Eddie stepped up to the cashier’s counter and said, “One more thing.”

He added chloroform to the air the clerk was breathing and she became woozy. He caught her from behind and sat her unconscious body in a corner of her station where he could watch her while standing in her place behind the counter.

Ten minutes. A truck pulled up to park sideways in front of the door. The driver hopped out of the truck with a man-on-a-mission expression and pushed directly through the convenience store door. He left the truck running. ‘Good,’ Eddie thought. ‘The kids can get at the windows and he won’t notice the other odd things going on in here.’

Blaine entered the store, went to turn down an aisle and stopped. No, get this over with. He marched up the counter with eyes averted.

“Hi,” said Eddie. “You look like you need directions.”

“No!” Blaine brought his eyes up to meet Eddie’s. “I need money. Give me what’s in the registers.”

“Can’t do that,” said Eddie as defiantly as he could. “The safe is locked until tomorrow morning.”

“No! Bills out of the cash registers!”

“I don’t have the pass code for the registers.”

“What the Hell? Empty the registers!” Blaine pulled out his shotgun and pointed it at Eddie.

“What. You gonna shoot?”

Blaine did shoot. Twice. He froze at the notion he could have actually pulled the trigger.

Eddie converted the mist above into soot to darken the room as two spots of blood pushed out from his shirt and splattered. Sinking down, he set off the horn in his Jeep.

Blaine panicked at the commotion and ran out of the store. He jumped into the driver’s seat, relieved that the engine was still running. But shifting into ‘drive’ and stepping on the gas did not put the truck in motion. Eddie had scooted behind him to reach down and turn the cement below the truck into water and, once the truck sank, back into cement. The wheels were locked into the pavement.

Spreading soot into the air around him, Eddie walked up to the truck window, making sure Blaine saw the blood on his shirt.

“So, I signaled the police before you killed me. They’ll find my body in a few minutes and check the cameras. To make sure they trace it to you, I wrote ‘Blaine Grisnell’ with my blood on the counter.” Eddie grinned.

Viktor popped up beside Eddie showing from inside his black hoodie his dragon face and his dragon hands. “You’re going to Hell!”

A noise from the other side got the robber’s attention and he looked to see Vladimir’s teeth from inside his black hoodie and his claws.

Vladimir pulled back his hood to show his mesmerizing eyes. “Blaine. You will pee your pants and get cold chills and turn back the other way.” He slipped down below the window when the robber did so.

Back at the driver’s window, Eddie gave his best menacing look. “So, what would you do if you could get out of this? Drive away and think about it.” He changed the cement back to water.

Without the cement, the truck crawled forward and Blaine gunned it out of the lot and onto the road.

Changing the water back into cement, Eddie took a look back into the store to see the cashier rising groggily above the counter. He grabbed the boys and walked in and grabbed a bag of chips on the way in. While on the way to the counter he changed the soot above back into normal air.

“You okay? You looked a bit wobbly a moment ago.” he said to the now-responsive clerk. “Here’s the last item.”

“Hey, I like your boys’ sweatshirts,” the clerk said, noting the golden Purdue Pete print on their black hoodies. My dad went to Purdue, so I follow the Boilermakers.”

On the way to the Jeep, Eddie checked in with his core soul Timothy. The clerk was confused but okay. Nothing was damaged in the store, although the ceiling and upper walls would need washing. The fear of arrest hung around Blaine and would be in the back of his mind the rest of his life, overriding the fact that he never could find the evidence that he had killed anyone at the convenience store and that the police would never come for him.

The next day, the threesome finished the tour of the cave and were browsing through postcards.

“This one for Mama and Papa,” said Vladimir. “This one for Dean and Sam and Castiel. This one for Amazing Bob. We need one for Scraps and Captain Beau.” Viktor offered two for them and the purchase was made.

Castiel was standing with Vladimir and Viktor when Eddie returned with their purchase. “King Erin says Glinda is about to follow through on her attempt to bring him to Oz. We need to get up there.”

“I’m going to need sitters for the boys first,” said Eddie.

“Sam said he would watch them,” said Castiel. “Get in the Jeep and I will take the boys and us to their bunker. Then we can visit Timothy and his incarnations from there.”


	5. Chapter 5

Quadling soldiers had lined cauldrons along the entire length of the desert along the Quadling border. Ingredients had been added and the contents lit. All awaited the arrival of Glinda the Good.

In her garden, Glinda walked among the wind trees, small trees with large leaves that constantly fluttered in spite of the lack of wind to move them. She picked leaves and put them in a basket until there were enough for the task to come. Then she left for the border.

The unoccupied hollow metal man and two female soldiers stood by the center cauldron. None of the three responded when Glinda arrived. Other than attending to the cauldron, they were not yet a part of the routine. Glinda walked past them to the very edge of the desert and its deadly sands, which turns into sand anyone or anything that even touches it.

Glinda pulled leaves one-by-one from the basket and held each over the sands and then released them. As she did so the wind picked up behind her. The more leaves, the more wind. Enough leaves and the wind began to roll the sand back. As the sand receded, Glinda advanced.

She and the wind had advanced more than halfway to the other side of the desert where the Forest of Burzee could be seen on the other side. At her feet bricks appeared sticking above through the ground. Then whole foundations of large buildings. After the foundations of an entire city had been uncovered she stopped.

At a familiar place, Glinda dumped the remainder of the leaves. Soil churned and lifted up from the ground and flew to the side until the ground was excavated down to the remains of a skeleton. After over a thousand years not much was left of the burial of her husband King Erin of Quadlingen.

Into the opened grave she threw a locket, a scarf, some notes, all of the few bits of thousand-year-old materials once belonging to her beloved.

The remnants of the body and the belongs rose above the ground around the grave. Then lightning flashed connecting the hole with the sky above. The flashes grew more intense and the thunder grew greater and Glinda recited incantations over the hole.

Suddenly the commotion died and King Erin of Quadlingen stood before her across the grave. Castiel appeared beside him, placed a running hourglass on the ground and stepped back.

Glinda dropped to her knees, both in awe that Erin was standing there after a thousand years, and in confusion at the appearance of the hourglass. “Erin, what does this mean?”

Erin also lowered to his knees. “It means, my dearest, that you did not bring me here. You cannot bring me back. You are mistaken about the veil between the living and Heaven. It is still unbroken. By gift of a God of another universe, Edward Timms is the only human who can cross the veil and still return to life. And Castiel is the only angel who can cross the same veil. I am here because Castiel, being able to transport anywhere, talked to ‘Amazing Bob’ of the other universe and then to ‘Chuck’ Creator of our universe vacationing in the other universe. By agreement Edward is staying in Heaven and I am allowed fifteen minutes in Edward’s place.”

Erin pointed to the emptying hourglass. “This much time, and I have to return.”

This was unexpected. Had she not been successful, Glinda felt she could handle this. It would have meant she needed to try something else. But Erin was telling her that even the Gods have affirmed there could be no return. She sat down and her face sunk into her hands. What could she say?

Erin sat down, too and spoke softly to her. “Oh my sweet. There is so much you have overcome and so much good that you have done and so many who depend on you and love you here. But I am content in Heaven. I lived my life and this is my reward. I really prefer being here. I love you, but I prefer here. We are both supposed to die eventually and share eternity here in Heaven. I’m sorry that my human life was short and your dragon life is so long. But, look! See my golden cord that links me you. It will never decay. When you have finally accomplished everything destined to you in life, I will be here waiting. I am in contact with you constantly.

“My time is almost over. But let me tell you: live your life, marry again if you wish, raise a family, it doesn’t threaten my love for you in the least. And here, a secret that I will share with you: all of our children have incarnated and are near you. All three.

“A hundred years ago the orphan Dorothy Gale was blown into Oz and you sent her back. Yet she fell back into Oz at least two more times before it was decided she should stay. Her friends may be in the Emerald City, but she is under your power to aid her when she needs it. Vladimir Tomesku and his family was all supposed to have perished in that raid on the vampire nest in St. Louis. And yet here he lives with Edward Timms, just a wish away if he needs you. And finally, the dragon Viktor was supposed to have perished with the town of Brammerang. And yet, like Vladimir, he, too, is in your sphere of influence. Even Eddie does not know the real reason Vlad and Vik were put under his care. It’s you.”

A thought later and Glinda felt Erins hands on her cheeks. She shivered. He kissed her. And was gone.

Castiel shifted awkwardly on the other side of the grave, then silently picked up the spent hourglass and he disappeared, too.

Glinda sat quietly, alone, and let the new memories and past fears wash over each other in her heart. For the moment she felt glad she was alone.

But shortly she heard the hoofs of a galloping horse behind her, and smiled just a bit. That would be the sound of the wooden horse Tippetarius bringing its rider Queen Ozma. And so it was.

Ozma slipped down from her steed and sat beside her friend and for a long time they remained quiet, looking over the ruins, the sands, and the forest beyond.

Finally, Queen Ozma spoke up. “We have been like sisters for over two centuries and yet I never knew you had once been married.” More quiet.

Again, Ozma spoke. “I also did not know that the capital of Quadlingen was here before the desert barrier was established dividing the Oz kingdoms from the surrounding lands. So, are you considering restoring the desert? Or leave this alone and let the Quadlings move in and improve it? Because I think a monument to King Erin needs to be erected here. And a huge glorious garden needs to be built around it.”

Ozma stood and looked around. “I can see your palace in that direction and the forest across the desert in the opposite direction. How about a bridge across the remaining desert to Burzee. It would be the single link to the outer kingdoms and we are friendly with all of them. Trade and tourism from the outer kingdoms would be good for Oz.”

She sat back down and smiled slyly at her friend Glinda. “You know, many of the princes of Ev are of marrying age and single and you’d be such a catch! You ought to take a vacation across the bridge. We’ll make it a friendship tour with our neighbors. That would be good for the country.”

Ozma finally stood up and patted the horse Tip. “I’m ready to head back to the Emerald City. Want to ride back?”

Glinda nodded and slipped behind her friend on Tippetarius and off they rode to her castle.

At the bunker, Sam had run out of ideas to keep Vladimir and Viktor occupied. Not that the boys could not entertain themselves among all the oddities here. It was just that there were so many things that they could get hold of that might release a Jinn or transport them into a supernatural place. He did not want to have to explain that to Eddie.

“Come on, guys,” Sam called. “Let’s head outdoors.”

He open the front door and Viktor flew up the steps with his wings spread and Vladimir hopped from floor to rail to outdoors to keep up.

Dean was outdoors, not expecting anyone to come out. He had finished washing the newly restored Impala and had settled down to flicking his dagger at leaves and about anything that moved.

Suddenly there was a commotion and he turned to see something flit around the corner of the bunker and automatically pitched the dagger at it.

Vladimir saw Dean’s action and screamed “No! No! No!” as he scooted up the wall and around the corner after the dagger.

Dean stood there puzzled when Sam came out the door, announcing that he had been babysitting and had just released the boys to play outside.

“Oh, no!” Dean raced around the corner where he found his dagger impaled in Vladimir through his shoulder and pinning him against Viktor’s chest. “Shit! Sammy get the first aid. We need to stop the bleeding!”

Dean called Castiel who, to his relief, had returned from Heaven and answered his phone. “Cas get here right now! I might have killed one of Eddie’s boys!”

That brought Castiel in a blink of an eye. “What? Where?”

Castiel went over to where a distraught Dean pointed and knelt by the boys. He put the fingers of one hand around the dagger and pulled it with the other hand. Blood gushed, but his healing power soon had it under control.

As soon as Vladimir appeared to be safe, Castiel rolled him over and slapped his hand over Viktor’s chest. The dagger had entered, aimed at his heart, but thanks to Vladimir having thrown his body over his friend’s body, the dagger pierced both of them and stopped at the hilt on Vladimir’s shoulder, the point stopping just short of Viktor’s heart.

Sam came out of the bunker with the now unneeded bandages and ointments. “What did you do? How did you hit one of them? Don’t you remember Amazing Bob saying...”

“I know! I know!” cried Dean. “Beware where I aim. I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it!”

Castiel announced that the boys were healed and Dean wiped the sweat off of his face.

Young Vladimir was a little shaken and his mind was still spinning, trying to wrap itself around what almost happened.

But Viktor began to shake uncontrollably. There were sparks and heavy breathing until he finally blew. “I’m...telling...Daddy!”

“Yeah,” Vladimir joined in with his buddy. “We’re telling Eddie!”

Dean froze for a moment, then broke out laughing in spite of himself. “I’m sorry! Don’t...don’t tell your daddy. Really, I’m sorry. What can I do to keep you from telling?”

The boy’s jaws dropped. Then they looked at each other and Dean could almost see the wheels spin in their heads as they realized they could milk this situation for goodies.

Dean pulled out his smart phone and flipped through pages.

Finally, he found something he knew would save his butt. “How about this?” he asked the boys and held up his phone for them to see.

Their eyes lit up. Yes!

“Someone call Eddie and tell him I’ll send the boys home late tonight,” Dean said. “We’ll be in Concordia.” He herded the excited boys into the Impala.

“Wait!” called out Sam. “What’s in Concordia?”

Vladimir and Viktor’s heads popped out of the passenger side windows of Dean’s Baby. “Street fair!”


	6. Chapter 6

“Lean to the left!” shouted Dean. “No, the other left! There we go!”

Dean lowered his voice for the phone. “I’ll have them home by ten. No, they’re on the Tilt-a-Whirl. They were just sitting there, so I was coaching them on how to make their cab spin longer. They’re having fun.”

“Okay,” said Eddie from the phone. “Beryx and Anica are here and Beryx wants to take Vladimir with him to New Jersey tomorrow. He thinks the boy needs to see what really happens among the vampires, the gritty stuff from which they’d sheltered him in the past. Viktor will stay home. I agree with Beryx that it would be too big a task to introduce both of them into that environment. Personally, I would be happy to have neither of them introduced to that gruesome stuff, yet. They’re twelve.”

“Didn’t they just watch you get shot in the chest in a convenience store?”

“Nobody actually died...”

“Not my point. You’re involved with us, me and Sam. You may be a goody-two-shoes that goes out and turns around people’s lives, but what you’re involved in now could get them killed if just one of those monsters catches them when you aren’t watching. It’s time for them to know all of it.”

“Point taken. You’re right.”

“The ride’s over. I’ll bring them home safe.” Dean ended the phone call.

The Ferris wheel was next. Dean had been observing the operator, a young, tall, and muscular woman who was running the ride as if she were a part of the machinery. Her partner, a large, tattooed man, had left and was headed towards an alleyway. On her own, she still pulled the clutch lever and leaped up on the ramp to seat the riders as if it were no effort.

Dean had expected to be riding with the boys, but the woman said that he could not because opposite cars on the wheel had to balance and she did not have two large people for the opposite car or “an equally handsome man” to balance Dean. But he was allowed to stand near her during the boy’s ride if he behaved.

Sitting at the top of the wheel, Vladimir and Viktor marveled over the sight below. It was still daylight but the rides were operating and people milled about, mixing motion and color all up and down the closed street. It also aided them on planning where they would have Dean take them next.

At the end of the ride the boys passed Dean, who was still talking with the operator. He had gotten as far as getting her name, Sandra, and was working on setting up a date. That was boring, and Viktor needed to pee. So the boys headed up the alley the tattooed guy had gone up. Viktor picked a wall and Vladimir looked around as he waited.

Mid-pee, Viktor felt Vladimir tap on his shoulder. “I’m not done!”

“Look,” said Vladimir. The two looked down the alley to see the tattooed man from the Ferris wheel being shouted at by some woman when some white guck flew out of his mouth into her face. He noticed the boys watching and pushed her through a doorway behind them.

“We should tell Dean,” said Viktor. But Vladimir was already scooting down the alley, so Viktor zipped up and followed.

They went through the door and up the stairs and looked around the corner where they saw the man drooling white strands of something, but not the woman. And now his attention was diverted to them. Four black rods reached over his head and moved at them.

Viktor sprouted wings, wrapped himself around Vladimir and flew both of them away and up to the top of the stairwell. They waited there until the man reached them, spitting a white mass on the steps and rails as he ascended. The black rods, attached to his back reached around him and carried him like long legs.

“Get ready, Vlad. We’re going back down.” Viktor spit fire at the creature and a fireball set it on fire.

As it reeled under the pain of the fire, Viktor grabbed his friend again and they glided in tandem in a spiral down the stairwell, pausing only a second to force open the door. Outside they raced down the alley to the fair. “Dean! Dean! Dean! Dean!”

Dean had just scored a phone number and was tucking a note paper in his pocket as the boys came running from the alley. “Dean, a lady needs help!”

He followed them back up the alley and to the door.

“There’s a spider man with long legs,” warned Vladimir. “Viktor set him on fire. We didn’t see what happened to the woman.”

Dean pulled out his pistol and pulled open the door. The three rushed in and followed the smell of burnt flesh up the steps to the top to find nobody. In the hall by the first landing they found on the ceiling what looked like the fringe of a human-sized cocoon and curdled blood. Dean took a sample of the white fibers and they returned to the street fair.

The original excitement was restored when Dean began displaying his skills on game row. He could not miss. Not anything. So they left with lots of goodies.

Well after dark, with Baby sitting outside Eddie’s Kansas barn, Dean took the boys to the Indiana barn with hopes of dropping them off and getting right back to his car. But his plans changed.

In Eddie Timms’ livingroom, Eddie, Wogglebug, Beryx Tomesku, and Sam Winchester were seated at a card table playing euchre. Scraps and Anica watched on. And as Dean herded the boys through the front door, Vladimir announced, “Guess what! Dean has a girl friend!”

Viktor added, “And her name is Sandra and they have a date!”

“That’s what they’re excited about?” Sam asked his brother.

Dean came in dragging two large trash bags full of stuffed animals. “And I thought it would be ‘Yay, Dean won every game at the fair and we’re loaded with toys. I’m hurt!”

“Yeah, he did!” Vladimir grabbed one bag and dragged it across the room. “Thank you, Dean!”

“Thank you, Dean! It was lots of fun!” Viktor echoed his buddy. “Scraps! Come look!”

That ended the card game right there, so Dean grabbed a folding chair and sat with the others. He threw the mass of fibers on the card table.

“Anyone recognize it?” he asked. “The boys claim to have seen some guy spit white stuff into some woman’s face and chase them using skinny black legs that came out of his back. Viktor burnt the guy – seriously, by the smell of it – and we found the remains of a huge cocoon on the ceiling made of this.”

Eddie rolled the substance between his fingers. “Spider silk? You think there’s some spider guy in Concordia?”

“Or with the street fair,” said Dean. “I’ll ask Sandra what she knows. Since, as it was just announced, I have a date tomorrow.”

“I can test the material to be sure,” said Wogglebug. “Oh, I should bring up my new concoction that Anica will be taking back home for the vampires. This solution will not only hold back their desire for blood, but it will block the grey-eyes from getting burned by the sun’s UV rays. Everyone at the Vam San can take it, as I’m certain it will inhibit skin cancers as well. It’s still blue in color and tastes the same.

“And the latest on my research on those shape-shifting creatures. Those organs that secrete the black goo have no parts that can actually produce the substance. It comes out of nothing, at least one of the organs draws it in from another dimension. Most of the actual being is in the other dimension. I think the organs protruded into our dimension and waited to come into contact with something living and ambulatory with which it could use to move around in our dimension.

“Plus, Sam here mentioned that one of the creatures turned into a grizzly bear. Well, in order for one of them to come into contact with a grizzly, they would have to have started in or at least passed through the area around Yellowstone or Glacier National Parks. That, or they are Canadian or Alaskan.”

“So I’ll search first for mysterious goings on in Montana,” said Sam.

“Viktor!” Eddie called over to his son. “Where’d you get that green plastic duck? It’s got a number on it.”

“He got it from the floating duck game,” explained Vladimir.

“But, you don’t keep the duck. You’re supposed to get a prize for picking it,” said Eddie.

“I didn’t want the prize. I wanted the duck,” said Viktor matter-of-factly and holding it close, in case Eddie might consider taking from him to return it to the carnival.

“Hey, it’s old and scratched up and they replace the ducks regularly anyway. And he did leave the prize there,” said Dean in Viktor’s defense. “You’re being a mean daddy!”

“You aren’t helping, Dean.”


	7. Chapter 7

The next morning Castiel arrived at Eddie’s to send the Timmses and the Tomekus to their destinations: Beryx and his son Vladimir to Newark and Eddie with his son Viktor and Anica to the Vam San in St. Louis. Eddie’s trip had not been planned, but Viktor was getting moody about not being able to join his buddy in New Jersey. So, Eddie decided a day or two with the crew at Anica’s would take Viktor’s mind off of the separation.

Vik and Vlad had become adopted as mascots of the sanitarium, so their every visit was a big deal. Hank and Joseph showed Viktor his room and they shared stories back and forth until Anica called a house meeting to announce the change in formulation of the blue drink they took every evening. That called for plans for an outdoor celebration in defiance of the sun for gray-eyes for the afternoon of the next day.

In New Jersey, Beryx and Vladimir toured the tenement where Beryx had gotten his last recruits. In spite of the squalid condition of the residence, Beryx had no more takers for the promise of a better life in St. Louis. No one was willing to lose the bloodlust each was used to having for decades or even centuries.

But, Beryx had other plans for this trip. He was to meet with Chris Griswald in an apartment house in Hoboken this morning. The building was one of several Griswald owned throughout the New York City metropolitan area. And they all used the service that once was used by the complex in St. Louis – a human trafficking service that delivered victims captured in other parts of the country, sometimes even in other countries.

Beryx drove to the Hoboken place and pulled around in back. He wanted to talk to the delivery driver and saw his truck was backed up to the kitchen and people were stepping down to enter through the kitchen. Beryx parked and soon found the driver, whom he recognized right off.

“Paul!” Beryx called out. “So you have routes way over here on the east coast.”

“Hey, Beryx!” Paul replied. “How are things in St. Louis? Need me to start deliveries again?”

“No,” said Beryx. “We’ve branched out into other programs now. We won’t need you. But, hey, I would like to talk to you about where you make your other deliveries. I’m mostly just curious, but I may want to set up shop in the area. Maybe make some contacts here. Could you wait a few minutes after you finish up here, so we can talk?”

Paul agreed to wait and Beryx entered the building with Vladimir close behind. Father and son walked both levels of the two-story building before they found someone who knew of their planned meeting with Griswald. They were told he would not be in New Jersey today and Beryx would have to reschedule. Beryx was disappointed. He would have to set a new appointment outside after he talked to the driver.

They prepared to leave where they had entered, through the kitchen. It was busy this time. A mesmerized woman was rolled in on a cart. A man grabbed a cleaver and chopped off both of her feet and threw the feet, shoes and all, into a plastic cart.

Beryx noticed the driver Paul slumped against the door with his head twisted half off. “Uh, what’s with the driver?” Beryx asked.

“We thought he left. He stepped in at the wrong time.” The butcher chopped off the woman’s left hand and she was carted out of the kitchen.

Vladimir could not takes his eyes off the cart of body parts. His father had to pull him into the hall. “Okay, son. You saw this much. You need to see the rest.”

Beryx took his son down the hall until they came to a door through which he and Vladimir heard people shrieking and wailing. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. “The poor vampires feed on people directly and live separate from their victims. Here is how the wealthier, more organized vampires do it. What you saw was their way of keeping their captives from escaping. Open the door.”

Vladimir did and looked in. At the opposite end of the room was a pit and a low sink. In the rest of the room were the recently amputated, freshly delivered from the kitchen and just now coming out of their trances. All were crawling with their one remaining hand towards Vladimir and the door, smearing the floor with the blood from their stumps. Vladimir pulled the door shut and his father guided him to the front door.

“We have to help them,” whispered Vladimir as he and his father stepped out onto the sidewalk.

“We can’t. There are dozens of these places all the way from Baltimore to Boston. I have to make connections with the other locations before I can do anything about any of them. I have to learn where all the deliveries come from. I’m sorry son, we can’t save them.”

“Eddie and Castiel could restore them! We have all the parts in the cart...”

Beryx looked over the truck in back of the building. The driver was dead. Griswald had not shown up. He son might be right. This building could be cleansed and still not jeopardize his efforts to find the other vampire nests. He pulled out his phone and called Castiel.

At the Vam San, Anica called the residents together. “Eddie and Castiel are about to send human victims from a vampire nest. Get the center hall and the lobby cleared. Stat! They are from one of the dismemberment places, so if you have a queasy stomach about such things you can stay put in the lounge. But the more of you that help, the faster we can get this over with.”

Viktor stayed with the few who remained in the lounge. He was curious, but afraid he could not be brave when the victims arrived. So he sat near the doors to the center hall.

It was mere minutes when Vladimir and the cart of body parts appeared in the lobby. He called for the volunteers to match the shoes in pairs and line them along the wall in the center hall. He would move the hands into a smaller container for matching with the victims later.

Part way through the sorting, Vladimir spied Viktor standing outside the lounge doors. He walked close to his friend and whispered, “Don’t be afraid, Viktor. We are helping these people. When we finish they will all be okay again. Eddie and Castiel will see to it. Come and help.”

Before Vladimir and Victor reached the cart, the first victims were appearing, lined up in a row across the lobby floor. Anica, with help from Hank and Joseph, dragged the wailing bodies to sit up along the wall. Then Anica proceeded to mesmerize them one-by-one.

The rest of the residents mustered up the courage to come out of the lounge to help out, grabbing pairs of shoes and showing them to each victim until one of them recognized their pair. Others took the severed hands and compared them to the attached hands of the victims until all were matched.

There were parts left over. Some captives had not been saved. Hank put them into a trash bag and set it beside the basement door for incineration later.

Eddie and Castiel arrived about this time. Eddie attached the feet and hands with fake flesh to hold them in place against the leg and arm stumps and to provide fleshy material Castiel could work with. Castiel followed along behind Eddie and healed them.

During the process, Monica had started to prepare lunch for the rescued guests. “I need two to peel potatoes,” she called out, looking directly at Vlad and Vik. Another resident grabbed silverware and napkins for the tables. After a good meal, Castiel sent each healed victim home.

In Hoboken, Beryx called Chris Griswald. “Chris, I’m at the building we were supposed to meet at. Nobody is here. It’s dark and it looks like the power was disconnected. There’s one dead body in the kitchen, the delivery guy. What’s going on?”


	8. Chapter 8

When Dean Winchester returned to Concordia, the sun was beginning to set and a September chill blew through the street fair crowd. He parked the Impala and walked the two blocks to the Ferris wheel that Sandra was still operating.

When she saw Dean, Sandra grabbed her bomber jacket, motioned to the other operator and marched off to meet him. “I’m famished!” she said. “Let’s pick a place to eat.”

They settled for a nearby sports bar called the Easy G and hid together at a quiet table.

“So, what do you do off season?” Dean asked.

“Dad owns a car repair service, Collins, in Memphis. I work there during the winter until they call me back each spring for the carnival tour,” said Sandra. “When Dad retires someday, I’ll take over. Right now I’m living large on the plains. What do you do when you aren’t fleecing our games barkers for your nephews?”

“Oh, um, I’m an FBI agent. I share land with my brother near Lebanon.”

“I saw there was some commotion with Charlie in the alley. What was that about?”

“The boys thought they saw something with a guy and some woman. I don’t think it amounted to anything.”

“Oh. That Charlie bothers me. He’s not that ambitious and some of the fair goers think he’s a bit creepy. I’ll see him watching me from a distance when he’s not helping with the wheel. I’ll probably belt him one before the tour ends.” Sandra mocked a few boxing punches.

“Yeah. I bet you can take care of yourself.”

Dean drove his Impala to Sandra’s motel room. Sandra arrived on her Harley, looking in full control in her black leather bomber jacket and pants. She locked down the bike and handed Dean her helmet as she unlocked the door. Some television and then some discoveries of tattoos – Dean’s warding sigil and the black widow spider in the small of Sandra’s back.

The next morning Dean offered to buy breakfast. He went out to start the car. When Sandra came out, Dean had just jumped out of his car screaming and swatting at something all over him.

“Spiders!” He yelled. “They flew out of the vents when I started the car!” They looked over the front seat that was covered with them.

Sandra walked up to the hood and told Dean to turn off the ignition, which he did, very carefully. Spiders were all over under the hood.

“Wolf spiders,” Sandra said. “They’re harmless. And these are small, like they’re newly hatched. Their mommas are probably in there somewhere. Let’s take her to a car wash and hose them out.”

After she closed the hood, Dean pointed out the thick spider webs running across the windshield wipers.

“That’s odd,” Sandra said. “Wolf spiders don’t weave webs. They chase down their prey.”

That was the mystery Dean related to his brother when he got home.

Sam had news of his own. He had found a story of Lara Koos and her ghost cats in the Flatheads outside of Kalispell, Montana. Supposedly, one of her several cats would suddenly disappear in front of visitors to her place, only to just as suddenly reappear.

“Sounds pretty ‘other dimensional’ to me,” said Sam. “Wanna go?”

Castiel wanted to go, too. If it was truly an ‘other dimensional’ case, he wanted the chance to jump into the other dimension. Amazing Bob did promise Cas could now ‘go anywhere.’

So, freshly packed for the trip the next morning, all three climbed into Dean’s car and Castiel moved it in a snap to a roadside park outside of Kalispell. Then they rolled into town to settle in at a motel near the casinos. Dean wanted to try his hand at the poker tables and Eddie had given him freshly created gold nuggets for him to turn in for cash for a small share of the winnings. But this was bigfoot country, and if anything interesting came up while they were up in the Flatheads, he might not make into the casinos at all.

First, to find the ghost cats. They drove out of town on highway 2, then onto a road that ran between Hungry Horse Lake and Flathead Ridge. Lara Koos lived in a small cabin within view of the road. She was sitting in front of her cabin when the Impala pulled up the lane.

The Winchesters walked up to Lara to talk, while Castiel walked over to talk to the cats in the yard. On the way, Sam whispered to Dean, “She’s a shapeshifter.”

“Hi,” said Dean. “We’re the Parotti Brothers doing research on bigfoot and their pets. You might have heard of us some night on ‘Coast to Coast.’ We were informed that you knew a lot about disappearances in the area and about the mysterious floating beings.”

Castiel joined the brothers. “The cats say our shapeshifters are in the gap in the side of the mountain back there.” He pointed to behind Koos’ cabin where the mountainside separated to form a dark recess. “We won’t need Miss Koos here. The cats know when they are about to transport to the other dimension, so one will tell me when the time comes and I’ll follow it over.”

“So,” Sam addressed the woman. “This ‘is’ where the shapeshifting creatures start from. And you are one of them. Why are you here? And why are you trying to get to the Winchesters in Kansas?”

The woman hesitated at first, then addressed Castiel. “You said you were going to follow the cat over to the other dimension?

“Yes. I can do that,” Castiel assured her.

The woman became extremely agitated and asked, “Could you take me with you? I’m one of those beings and my link to the other side was broken. I can’t release from this body. I’m open to talking about our mission, if you’ll take me.”

“Agreed,” said Castiel.

“Okay then,” the woman said. “First, they know you two are Sam and Dean Winchester, so I imagine those with bodies around here are grouping to attack soon. We learned about the demon hunters in this country and it is believed they are the one group of people who will figure out our presence before we can get established and be able to protect ourselves. Other super humans told us that you were our direst threat, so some have travelled to find you and destroy you and your headquarters.

“I’m part of an exploratory group. We had no idea what was on this side of the barrier at first. Now it is known. I do not know what our leaders have planned now that we do know. As I said, my link is broken.”

One of the ghost cats approached Castiel, who picked it up and announced that it was about time to cross.

Dean hurried his next question. “So, have you seen bigfoot?”

Too late. The ghost cat, Castiel and Lara Koos disappeared.

“So,” Sam said to Dean. “Shall we head up to the gap in the mountain back there?”

“Might as well,” said Dean.

They started in the direction of the mountain, but stopped short when they heard growls and howls from the forest between them.

“Sounds like we’ll be battling our way there,” said Sam.

“Yeah, lets go to the car and get better armed before we go.” Dean unlocked the trunk.

As Dean rummaged for weapons, Sam was watching him closely.

“Dean?”

“Yeah, Sammy.”

“My spidey vibes are picking up a supernatural change in you.”

“Am I about to sprout wings? Cause that could really help us right now.”

“No. But I sensed a second entity in your body just now. I don’t know what.”

“Well, we can worry about that later.”


	9. Chapter 9

Castiel, holding the ghost cat, and Lara crossed into the other dimension into a very long room. The few cats laying about was no surprise. But the tall hairy upright-walking creatures were. Castiel wondered how Dean would react when he told him this was where bigfoots came from and why they are so elusive.

A very human-looking being walked into the room and approached Lara. The differences between it and humans were slight: their eyes were larger and ears were smaller and they had six fingers on each hand. 

When the being began talking to Lara, the language spoken was unique but Castiel, being an angel, still understood what was being said.

He asked the being, “You are you? And where is this place?”

“This is Castiel and he brought me here from the other side. I couldn’t link on my own,” said Lara to the being.

The being explained to Castiel, “Well, I am Tadrigrezzel and you are in the university labs in the city of Pedsh. In this room are creatures that naturally cross the barrier between our realm and yours. Let’s go to where our explorers of you realm reside. Larana, you will be happy to know your source body will soon be here and we will attempt to reconnect you.”

Castiel followed the two out into a hallway and then into another room which looked much like a lounge surrounded by monitors and electronic equipment. People sat in comfortable chairs, each encased in a shell that provided subtle light and sheltered the sitter from the commotion around them. As each person sat down, that person pressed buttons that started a hum and turned on lights above the chair as it slipped back deeper into the shell. When the humming stopped and different lights came on, another being would usually approach with a folder or clipboard and they chatted.

One being entered the room, spied Tadrigrezzel and Lara and came over to them. After an exchange of words, the being settled into one of the chairs and turned on the contraption. Tadrigrezzel convened with beings at the controls, one of whom walked over to Larana and ran a scanner over her.

Tadrigrezzel addressed Castiel. “Connection has been re-established between Larana and the Earth person Lara Koos. You can take her back now.”

“I’m not taking her back,” stated Castiel.

“But, why not?” asked Tadrigrezzel.

“You are killing our people and taking over their bodies. Why would I help you do that? I’m here to end your incursion into our world,” Castiel said. “I’m here to say, either you close down your project or our people will end your ability to cross over.”

At the Vam San in St. Louis, the residents were holding a sun day celebration. It was the gray-eye vampires’ first day since Wogglebug updated their blue solution drinks to prevent burning by the sun. Viktor, in dragon form, was playing Frisbee fetch with the brothers Hank and Joseph. Someone brought home a grill to cook hamburgers and franks and others just sat out on lawn chairs to bask in the sun. Vladimir sat with his mother Anica in lawn chairs with their sunglasses on and bare feet, soaking it all in.

The event was being shared online with the tenement in Newark. Beryx was there and set it up to show the residents there the new life in St. Louis. It was a shameless promotion, but it worked.

Beryx was holding a Blue Drinks Day in the tenement in conjunction with the celebration in St. Louis. Everyone was to drink Wogglebug’s solution and see for themselves that they had no craving and could safely step out into the bright afternoon sunshine.

Later that day, he would share with Anica the good news: this time thirteen Newark vampires had decided to join the St. Louis complex. Others at the tenement were thinking about it, particularly after receiving news of the disappearance of the tenants in the complex in Hoboken.

And back at the Lara Koos homestead, Dean and Sam Winchester had their weapons selected. Dean handed his brother a Glock 20 for protection and chose for himself a Smith and Wesson pistol. No rifles since they would be fighting the bears up close. They entered the shelter of huge centuries-old hemlocks and cedars, headed towards the shapeshifters’ cove.

The brothers were likely half way to their destination when Sam announced that the shapeshifters had arrived. They stopped to listen beyond the sounds of woodpeckers and bald eagles to hear the rustle of large ground creatures. Two bears approached from one side and another from the other.

“Bad guys,” announced Sam and Dean took three shots, taking out all three grizzleys.

“One more,” said Sam.

“Get down,” hissed Dean. He scurried over to a wide spruce and stood behind it, listening.

The sudden nearby rustle of leaves startled him, and Dean found himself face-to-face with another man raising his rifle to shoot him. But, the man fell dead from a shot by his brother, Sam.

“Bad guy,” said Sam belatedly.

There was no more hindrance during the rest of the trip. But Dean was finding himself coughing every now and then, once he stooped over hacking but didn’t cough up anything.

“Not handling the cold damp air well?” Sam asked.

Dean shook his head. “No, my throat feels swollen.”

They approached the gap in the mountain side and saw the familiar exposed shapeshifter organs floating in mid-air. No other creatures were among them.

Dean decided is was best to shoot from a distance. There was no telling what defenses the entities had. He shot each one apart, then advanced until he had more in sight and shot them.

In the middle of the cove the brothers searched for more entities or some sign of where they originated. Nothing else was there.

Back at the opening they were confronted by three wolves.

“Bad guys,” said Sam and shot one of the wolves.

Dean was not useful at the moment. He was hacking again as the other two wolves approached him and he hacked white strands of something in the face of one of them. He quickly shot the other and watched the first one struggle to breathe through the white mass sealing its mouth and nose. Shortly, Dean put it out of its misery.

Sam looked over the spit-upon wolf’s face and poked the white stuff with a stick.

“Spider silk?” he asked Dean.

Castiel appeared as the brothers were examining the wolf. He noticed the white mass right off.

“Dean spit that gunk at the wolf and smothered it,” explained Sam. “It’s like what the boys said that guy in the alley did in Concordia.”

“Well,” said Castiel. “I’m through in the other dimension. Lara’s staying there. And I informed the beings there that any more intrusion in our world would be met with resistance. Your destroying of the entities here reinforced my claim.”

Dean was hacking again.

“Let me take us and Dean’s car to the bunker. We can examine him better there,” said Castiel and in a blink the men and car were outside the Men of Letters bunker.

Sam put his hand on his brother’s back and felt four bumps there. “That’s not good...”


	10. Chapter 10

Once in the bunker, Dean pulled up his shirt and Sam poked at four ridges on his back. This only caused Dean to convulse and begin spitting more silk. When he stood back up, Castiel squeezed his chin to make him open his mouth, and Castiel squinted his eyes to look in.

“You have two things sticking out on either side of your tongue,” Castiel told Dean. He jumped back as Dean began hacking again.

“Okay,” said Sam. “We’ll need help. Eddie and Wogglebug?”

“I’ll go ask them,” said Castiel, and he disappeared.

Soon he returned with Eddie, Viktor, Vladimir and Professor Wogglebug.

Wogglebug observed Dean, then looked around the room. “Shirt off, Dean, then lie belly down on the conference table with your head over the edge.” He put the physician’s bag he had brought with him and put it at the one end of the table, then pulled out a large hankey. “Eddie could you turn this into a tin sheet?” He then proceded to set out a tray and place tools on it.

Finally, Wogglebug washed up at the nearest sink, pulled on gloves, and returned to examine the bumps on Dean’s back. Then he took out a tongue depressor. “Say ‘Ah.’”

Dean did as ordered and Wogglebug examined the web-shooting extensions in his mouth.

“Viktor?” he asked. “Did you say the tattooed guy used four extra legs to walk with instead of his own legs?” With one bristly finger he twirled his long handlebar mustache.

“Yeah.”

“And Vladimir, the guy spit white stuff in somebody’s face?” Wogglebug twirled his equally long curled eyebrow.

“Yeah.”

“And did the white stuff look like the same stuff making up the cocoon?”

“Yeah.”

“And, Dean. The guy’s name was Charlie?”

“Yeah, Charlie. A creep.”

“Okay,” Wogglebug said. “First, I’ll desensitize Dean’s system. Then I’ll cut where the bumps are. The tin sheet covers what I cut so that the creature isn’t able to dig back in. Eddie, I’ll direct you when to turn the parts to rubber and Castiel, could you heal Dean as I pull out the creature?”

“What are you numbing me with?” asked Dean, obviously concerned.

“It hasn’t been named yet,” replied Wogglebug. “You will be fully alert, but you will not feel anything. Not to worry, Dean. I have far more experience than Eddie did digging around in Sam’s belly. I graduated way past the board game ‘Operation.’”

“What degrees do you have?”

“I’m the university’s founder. I created all of the degrees the others get.” Wogglebug administered the shot and returned to his tool tray to get a scalpel and forceps and the tin sheet.

He cut into Dean’s back down to one of the bumps and pulled out a short extension of the creature. He cut to the center of all four bumps, then up Dean’s spine. “Eddie, change what you can of the creature into rubber.”

Eddie did so, and Wogglebug proceeded to pry out all four of the creature’s extensions and peel back where they connected. He laid down the tin sheet and began cutting further, almost to Dean’s neck. More of the creature was lifted out. Wogglebug pulled on it, but could not force any more of it out, so he cut across it. He slid the tin sheet up farther and lifted out part of the creature.

“Ready for healing, Castiel. Up to the tin sheet.” Wogglebug tipped up the tin sheet to form a divider.

Castiel put his hands on Dean’s back and the long wounds closed up.

Wogglebug continued. “Eddie, the creature is at least an inch thick along Dean’s spine. Try to turn to rubber whatever you recognize as the creature. Then start at the two web spinners in his mouth and go the other way.”

Eddie touched the creature’s remains from Dean’s back, then Dean turned his head so Eddie could touch the web spinners. “I think I connected with what I changed into rubber from other end” Eddie said.

“You won’t be able to pull the whole thing through his throat. How about turning it all into fake blood and we’ll let Castiel heal him.”

Eddie did turn the creature’s body into blood and Dean gagged up blood. Castiel returned to healing him.

“That should be it,” said Wogglebug. “Nobody left anything in Dean’s body, did they?”

“Anyone seen my smart phone?” asked Sam and leaned over Dean’s back to listen in mock concern.

Wogglebug poked at the creature’s rubber remains with his scalpel. Blood gushed out of pores in the rubber body. “So, it’s a parasite. It feeds through straining the victim’s blood through its body. The extensions would eventually grow longer in the body and these nubs would probably grow and lock around the spine and rib cage. Eventually the creature would connect with the victim’s spinal cord and interact with his brain. It grew web spinners in Dean’s mouth, but in keeping with the spider concept there should also be appendages to secrete venom or digestive enzymes. I’ll dissect it more throughly at the university.”

“I need to call Sandra!” said Dean. “When will I get my feeling back?”

“About an hour and a half,” said Wogglebug. “Eddie could probably turn your blood into his universal fake blood and you’d be able to move immediately. Of course, you’d also be sober again.”

“You know, in a hospital you’d have to use all sorts of monitors and equipment and specialists to help you,” quipped Sam.

“And a valid medical license,” added Dean.

“I have Eddie and Castiel. I think you have a better chance with us.” Wogglebug gathered his used tools and packed them in a sterilizing solution, then turned to wash up. “And it’s totally free! As some of you Americans say, ‘Such a deal!’”

When Castiel returned Eddie and the boys to the Vam San, Claire Novak was there with two companions. She brought with her two ‘native’ vampires to submit to the recovering vampire rules in exchange for not taking their lives. Monica was pleased to see them, as it meant she wasn’t the sole ‘native’ versus all of the ‘gray-eyes’ at the sanitarium.

With the New Jersey arrivals, that would be fifteen new residents. Anica had her work cut out for her. Most of the newcomers would have to bunk together until they could get jobs and start contributing to an expansion of the complex. 

Right now it was a mad rush to find beds to handle all of them. And shelves, and tables, and lamps. She knew Eddie would come through and make a deal with a local furniture manufacturer to get them for her. She knew that the Tomesku family fortune in Vienna would cover it easily.


	11. Chapter 11

The Winchesters slept in the day after their Montana adventure. The sun was long up when Sam finally padded into the kitchen and started the coffee.

Sipping a cup of the freshly brewed stuff, Sam walked into Dean’s room and jabbed a sleeping Dean in the shoulder.

“Wha...”

“Just making sure you’re still alive.” Sam knew Professor Wogglebug, Eddie Timms and the angel Castiel were an odd surgery team. But they got the spider-like symbiotic out of Dean’s body with no unpleasant side-effects, other then coming out of the procedure sober. The bottle of Jim Beam by Dean’s bed suggested that he had probably solved that last night.

Sam sat down at the computer to do some research. Whatever infected Dean was still out there, either at Concordia or traveling with the carnival that had just pulled up stakes in the town.

He checked the monitors and saw Castiel outside Eddie’s Kansas barn nearby. Castiel was planting stakes in the fallow field behind the barn and posting signs. Sam decided he had might as well walk the shortcut to the barn to see what he was up to.

At the barn Sam saw that a city block’s worth of field had been marked off. Castiel had run a yellow-and-black tape marked with ‘DO NOT CROSS’ from stake to stake. The angel looked over his work and, with a satisfied nod, walked over to join Sam.

“What’s going on?” Sam asked Castiel.

“My first mission with Eddie’s past incarnation Shebbeth. We searched the Hall of Records in Heaven and found a case of two sisters destined to die by tornado tonight. One was to be crushed and other would simply disappear, never to be found. Circumstances allow for their early-life deaths to be prevented. I need to be there when a severe storm system crosses near Dothan, Alabama and change the outcome.”

“Can’t you just jump in now and tell them ‘don’t stay here tonight?’”

“No,” said Castiel. “Since the souls agreed before their births that their deaths would be of benefit, it has to register with the souls that the agreed upon event happened. So, I have to be there at the event of their deaths to change the environment to make another outcome. If I don’t, the girls will soon meet with another catastrophe to fulfill their souls’ agreement.”

“Oh,” said Sam. “So, if you prevented someone from meeting their destined event, their destiny would just get them later. It sounds awfully complicated.”

“Right. That’s why Eddie only does rescues assigned to him. His core soul researches them through the Hall of Records and with contact with the souls in question.”

Castiel disappeared and Sam strolled back to the bunker. Castiel appeared in the Alabama town of Ashford and walked around it before jumping to the surrounding peanut fields. Sam got back to the bunker to find Dean on his phone with Sandra, making arrangements to meet in her hometown of Memphis, Tennessee in two weeks.

It was a busy day at the Vam San. Furniture came in vans, now parked out front, the same time the first arrivals from New Jersey arrived in shuttles from the St. Louis Lambert International Airport.

The smell of stew wafted through the open doors below a banner reading ‘Welcome New Jersey.’ Rooms were already assigned and a resident matched the newcomers with their rooms and pointed out the furniture they were to carry in to their rooms. Hank and Joseph were available to help assemble the beds and tables. All arrivals were single adult men and women and Hank and Joseph discussed which of the women might be desirable to date in the future.

Anica Tomesku received a call from her husband. Beryx told her he had another meeting scheduled with Chris Griswald and would be home afterwards, depending on how it went.

With his boys reunited since the Tomesku trip to New Jersey, Eddie had Castiel drop them off in his home in Indiana. Wogglebug was due this day for their education. He had to be sure Viktor did some writing to satisfy the professor. Wogglebug’s pills might have given Viktor the ability to write, but he needed to practice to actually write legibly. Not to be left out, Vladimir labored on his own writing pad.

In the early evening, Castiel was outside the Andrews family’s country home, where sisters Megan and Janice lived. He settled in among a grove of live oaks to await the incoming storm front.

The family came home in the family van about the time the tall dark clouds appeared in the distance. They hustled grocery bags into the house just as the hail started and lights popped on in room after room. Sand began to blow about and swept up into the air, and the sky developed an eerie green cast as Castiel walked through the peanut plants towards the house to be in position at the critical time.

He was in the back yard and heard the tornado warning inside the house and the parents calling the children downstairs. The dark clouds lowered and a funnel dropped. A large funnel. It hit the field across the road and churned debris headed in Castiel’s direction, leading to more shouting from inside the house.

The tornado pressed squarely into the farmhouse and planks began to fly. The roof lifted and blew completely off of the house and a playhouse in back joined it, being pulled up into the air.

Castiel heard the scream as one of the daughters flew directly out of the house with debris all around her. This the one that was to simply disappear. Castiel popped her body into the marked-off field in Kansas and concentrated on the house.

The other daughter was in the lower back room and once the house began to collapse back onto that room, Castiel took action. He moved the house corner to Kansas and followed it there.

Sam Winchester was at the Kansas barn and saw it all: First, a young girl suddenly appeared standing in the field and wobbled a bit, confused by suddenly being back on the ground, safe and upright. Then the corner of a house appeared in the far corner of the taped-off area, only to disappear and suddenly reappear nearby without parts of the upper story. This disappeared and immediately reappeared, now minus the walls. And again just a pile of boards that had a moment before been the rest of the back room.

Finally, one more transformation. Some of the boards disappeared from the pile and Castiel, standing nearby, began making debris disappear until a badly mangled body showed in the pile. He picked it up and caused the girl’s body to repair itself until she moved and looked around.

Castiel pointed to the other girl and all three disappeared. Sam assumed Castiel and the girls were back at the house in Alabama to find the other family members, and Castiel affirmed that minutes later when he popped into view right beside Sam.

“That’s it?” asked Sam.

“That’s it.” Castiel moved both of them into the bunker, where Sam pulled out his phone and called Eddie and Anica and Jody to tell them to watch the evening news.

Hank answered Anica’s phone, saying she was not available. She had just gotten a package in the mail and in it was Beryx’s battered head in a plastic bag. Hank called Joseph and Monica to attend to Anica, and took the box with him into his bedroom. Right now he was sitting there with it and did not know what to do.

“Cas and I are coming,” Sam told him.

In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Claire Novak answered a knock at the door. Outside stood an extremely nervous scrawny gray-eyed man with an armload of papers and a briefcase.

“Sheriff Jody Mills?” the little guy asked.

“I’m Sheriff Mills,” said Jody, coming up behind her ward.

“I am Andros Pesti,” he said. “I was told that, at the demise of Beryx Tomesku, I was to deliver my records to you, and that you would give me protection.”


	12. Chapter 12

Sam Winchester appeared at the Vam San first, outside Hank’s door, and knocked.

“I thought I would be brave and in control for her,” said Hank. “But I’ve never had to deal with something like this.” He kicked at the box on the floor with Beryx’s head in it.

“I’ve had experience with this,” Sam assured him. “Give me the box and let’s go talk to her.”

When they reached the lobby, Anica was giving orders to the new residents who were still setting up their rooms as if it were just another day. Sam approached Anica with box in hand just as Castiel appeared with Eddie, her son Vladimir and Viktor.

Vladimir spied the box immediately. “Oooh! What’s in there?” He and Viktor rushed up to Sam to see.

“Nothing!” Sam switched the box to behind himself and pushed it back against Hank and mumbled, “Take it back to your room.”

Hank disappeared again with the box.

Eddie pulled the boys back, giving Sam a knowing look. He would find out later what was going on.

“Anica,” he said. “The boys don’t know the news yet. Do you want to talk with them together?”

“Yes. Come with me, you two. I have something serious to talk about with you.” Anica led Vladimir and Viktor outside behind the complex, as Eddie followed Sam back to Hank’s room and Castiel disappeared to get Sheriff Mills.

Anica came back into the Vam San with a teary-eyed Vladimir clinging to her side. They settled into a chair in the lobby and Monica set them up with hot chocolate and gave them space. One by one, residents came by and hugged Vladimir and gave their condolences.

Eddie noticed young Viktor had quietly entered later and was standing stone-faced in the far corner of the room, staring at the floor. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and whispered, “Come on, son. Let’s take a walk.”

They settled in on the farthest couch in the lounge, and sat quietly for a while.

Finally, Eddie said to the boy, “This is just between you and me, Vik. You’re glad Vladimir’s papa is gone, aren’t you?”

“He was mean to me. I hate him.” Viktor began to pout and lowered his face into his father’s side.

Eddie wrapped his arm around him. “You’re absolutely right. He was mean, and you have every right to be angry at him. It’s natural for you to feel as you do. It’s perfectly right.”

They sat for a few more minutes, then Eddie continued. “I don’t know if you heard, but when you were flying over the woods upset that day, everyone here was angry with Beryx and told him what they thought of what he did. Vladimir said he was staying out among the cement blocks, too, and his mama told Beryx she was ashamed of him. He went and hid when you came back. I really believe if he had more time, he would have told you he was sorry for being mean to you.” Viktor was looking up at him.

“And think of Vladimir and his mama. They know all the good things his papa did over the years that you never got to see. He protected them from really bad people who aren’t happy with what’s being done here, and now he’s gone and they’re scared and hurting and sad. Do you think you could forgive Vladimir’s papa for being mean, and feel sad for Vladimir losing his papa for today? I think he really needs that right now.”

Viktor sat upright and stood up with some urgency. “Yeah. I need to tell Vladimir I’m sad for him.”

Eddie walked with him back to the lobby to find Vladimir. There, Sheriff Jody Mills and Claire were with Castiel giving their condolences to Anica and introducing Andros Pesti and his papers.

“We weren’t going to share this yet,” explained Andros. “We had hoped to find all of Mr. Griswald’s assets, beyond just the vampire-infested buildings. But this is most of them. And I have connections to the service that supplies their victims. It’s based in Denver. Beryx and I agreed that, if one of us were killed, the other would take what we have to Sheriff Mills. He figured that it would be unwise for me to bring these here directly.”

“Joseph, take Mr. Pesti into the lounge and help him lay his papers out on the tables,” said Anica. “We can look over them after things settle down. It’s been a long day.”

Everyone had grown quiet as the loss of Beryx totally sank in. Anica turned Vladimir over to Viktor’s attention and took Sam’s arm. “Let’s take care of Hank.”

Castiel realized he had forgotten about Dean and transported to the bunker to get him. When they both appeared in the lobby, Dean looked around puzzled at the unusually quiet group.

“Hey! Who’s funeral?” Dean announced cheerfully.

Sam looked to Castiel. “Did you think to tell Dean that Beryx had died before popping him over here?

Castiel looked down a moment and back up at Sam. “Um, no. I didn’t think to do that.”

“Hank, honey, give me the head.” Anica stood at Hank’s doorway with Sam behind her. Eddie was nearby.

Hank picked up the box and solemnly handed it over.

“It’s sweet of you to worry about my feelings,” Anica explained. “You’re still new enough to believe there’s a chance for romance as a vampire. I hope that, here, that can come true for you. But, when you are several hundred years old like I am, there’s no room for left for that. It’s just lust and then the bloodletting. Beryx and I are only married because I failed to kill him during the act and I bore a child, and we chose to give him legitimate parents for the records.

“Now, that doesn’t mean I won’t tear Griswald’s little fiefdom down around him to pay for what he did. But there won’t be tears about it. I’ll report Beryx’s final death in Vienna – let’s see, how many death records have there been filed for him so far? Fifteen? Yes, so this will be for Beryx Tomesku, the Sixteenth, the final one. We’ll bury his remains in the family cemetery in Cluj, back in Romania and redirect the Tomesku estate to his son Vladimir. Then, that will be that.”

“Oh, one more thing.” Anica turned to Eddie. “I need to set up guardianship with you for Vladimir, eventually full adoption. He’s a tough little boy, but I don’t want him centering his life around a vampire’s nest. Twelve years is enough. He should think of you and Viktor when he thinks of home. I want to be able to control when he comes here, so he isn’t involved in whatever conflict we’re likely to have with the east coast. It could get serious. Beryx would have agreed.”

After giving profuse apologies in the lobby, Dean checked his ringing smart phone. It was Wogglebug. “Hey, what’s up?”

“I found out more about your parasite,” said Wogglebug. “I found the parts that secrete venom and digestive enzymes. They are on the lower side of the mass on which its legs are attached. That’s explains why the spinners are in your mouth. It’s attached to you upside down. Otherwise you’d have been spitting silk out of your butt.”

“Ho, funny, ho,” replied Dean. 

His brother was listening in behind him and snickering. “You’d have to change your pants every time you farted, Dean.”

“Bitch!”

“But,” continued Wogglebug, “with the organs on the part of the parasite on the inside of the host, the fluids would spill into the host’s body instead of the host’s victim’s body, which would kill the parasite, too. And without the hard shell of an insect, the dissolved body would just become a gooey puddle on the floor. There is nothing logical about a parasite killing itself along with its food source. Nothing gets digested so why bother?”

“And, have you found Charlie?” Wogglebug added.

“No,” said Dean. “I was going to ask Sandra about him when I go to see her. Maybe I should pay an early visit.” He swatted at Sam, who was trying to get at something on him with a paper towel.

One final dab with the towel and something large and shivering dropped from Dean’s shoulder onto the floor. Vladimir and Viktor were over it in a heart beat.

“Oooooh!” said Vladimir. “It’s got babies!”

Sam pulled the boys apart so he and Dean could see, as a sprinkling of black dots scurried about and regroup back onto a large spider’s back.

“A mother wolf spider carrying it’s babies on her back. It was climbing up you shoulder, Dean,” said Sam.

He reeled back as Dean came closer to crouch down over the spider family. “Eww! Didn’t you shower? You’re all musky smelling. Maybe you’re attracting them.”

“Sam could be right,” said Wogglebug over the phone. “The parasite probably ejected pheromones into your system. Eddie flushed clean blood into you, but they could still be embedded in your skin, and you are attracting female spiders. You need to scrub thoroughly with tomato juice and vodka. That should take care of it.”

“So you want Dean to bathe in a tub full of Bloody Mary,” Sam confirmed.

“Pheromones would explain why there were spider babies in my car when I visited Sandra,” said Dean. “Charlie was looking over my car and probably got his male spider pheromones all over it. I probably splattered the mothers all over the engine when I started the car.”

“We should check out where Charlie stayed in Concordia tomorrow,” said Sam.


	13. Chapter 13

It was the next morning and Castiel, Jody and Claire were the only non-residents still at the Vam San. Along with Anica, Hank, Joseph and Monica, they were poring over Andros’ collection of papers in the lounge.

Hank passed out cups of freshly-brewed coffee. The one he handed to Claire had a heart clumsily drawn with a red marker.

Claire looked sternly at the drawing and rolled her eyes towards Hank. “A heart. Really?”

Hank smacked his brother Joseph before he could razz him about it.

Anica gathered together the paperwork for the human trafficking business and handed them to Sheriff Mills. “We should deal with this first, Jody. It should put a wrench in the works for Griswald if all of his residents suddenly have to find their own victims to feed on. The more turmoil we can cause the easier it will be to step in and close it down. Could you and your girls research this and get information on the office in Denver? I bet the leaders of the organization are vampires.”

Jody accepted the papers and stuffed them into a folder. “You ready to go home?” she asked Claire, who nodded back. With a mere thought, Castiel sent them home.

“And, Andros,” Anica pointed towards the vials of blue liquid in the dining room. “Think about how we could get this stuff into the drinking water in Griswald’s buildings. We may get some converts before we have to hurt them.

Eddie and the boys were up early at their home in Indiana. Today Scraps, Captain Beau Fyter, and maybe Professor Wogglebug were to arrive to teach the boys.

Eddie figured that the Ozians were already there. He heard the ‘thump, thump, thump’ of something outside on the patio. He handed sweatshirts to the boys and herded them outdoors to join their friends.

On the patio, a metal man and quilted woman were playing basketball. Beau had hung the basket on the side of the barn as Scraps cleared away the chairs.

“We’re going to play HORSE first,” announced the captain to Vladimir and Viktor. “Then it will be you two against Scraps and me.” He gathered two more balls from a box and tossed them to the boys, who accepted them enthusiastically and began awkwardly bouncing them on the patio and chasing them into the grass.

“Change of plans,” the captain said as a second thought. “Practice dribbling first, then HORSE, then the game.”

Scraps had already stolen Vladimir’s basketball and in a low stance began dribbling it around him, then grabbed Viktor’s ball, too, and raced around both boys.

“So, where are you off to this morning?” Beau asked Eddie.

“A visit to Hell for a soul rescue. Five of them this time. Timothy has plans for them,” said Eddie. “I’ll be back by noon. There are refreshments in the kitchen, Scraps.”

Eddie walked into the barn, pulled up one of the doors in the floor and climbed down, then came out in the barn in Utah. Outside that barn, he turn the mountainside into water that settled into a large pool. Behind it was the portal that Eddie took to his destination.

The destination was a lake of fire. Generally the hellish event worked like this: Lost souls were burning in the various pits of fire and demons lined the outer rim. As their skin burn away the victims lost the sense of feeling, but the demons healed them with fresh skin and the burning started all over again – forever. The were also kept worn out so that they only emitted groans and hisses. Not that the demons didn’t enjoy it with constant screams. From Eddie’s vantage point at one end, the lake seemed to extend forever into the distance.

‘Only five,’ Eddie reminded himself. His heart ached for the others, but he could only take five this time.

He drew out the nearest demons and destroyed them, then changed the air to smother the flames around the nearest five humans. Then he slid down into the pit.

“Would you like to be reborn?” He asked the first victim, who of course consented. Then he pulled the soul in sphere shape from the body to absorb into his own body. The useless body would drop to the ground. Four more times he repeated the routine and was finally ready for the trek back. The other demons were too sensible to pursue him after he drew two more demons from their hellish bodies and dissolved them.

On the way back to the portal, Eddie passed a familiar passage with veins of copper in the walls. This was where Dean and Sam had accompanied him into Hell. They had rescued a boy named Ezekial – ‘Zeke’ -- from Hell and he had turned strips of the wall into copper to convince the boy he was actually in the family copper mine near Ely, Nevada. That was where Sam left Zeke with authorities who would have to find him foster parents.

Zeke would have been a little older than Vladimir and Viktor. Eddie wondered what had happened to him. 

“Timothy, do you think it would be good for me take the boys and find Zeke?” Eddie asked his core soul.

“We have every faith in you doing what is good,” Timothy replied. But then, Timothy always said that.

Eddie added a streak of platinum to the copper for no particular reason. While doing so, he noticed voices coming from a narrow side passage. They were voices of old women chatting and cackling and from not far away. So he quietly walked down the passage to faint light in the distance.

In a room he found three extremely old women, scrawny and without eyeballs except for one that had a single eye. Their clothes were woven in bold colors and gorgeous patterns. One eyeless woman was at a spinning wheel making thread from a pile of silk fibers and the others seated beside her collected the spindles of thread as she filled them.

The one-eye woman announced to the others, “We have company. Someone from the surface.”

“Who?” asked the spinner, who stopped her task and reached towards the other. “Let me see. Lend me your eye.” 

“No. We do not know him,” said the first to speak. “I’ll ask. Who are you and why have you come? We haven’t called for you.”

Eddie responded. “My name is Edward Timms. I came to hell to collect lost souls and heard your voices on my way back home. He leaned down to look them over and announced, “You know, I can fix your sightlessness. All I have to do is fill your eyes in with a flesh that will rebuild your eyes.”

The spinner punched the one-eyed woman’s shoulder. “Give me your eye, sister. I want to see him.” The other finally relented and drew her lone eye out its socket and handed it over.

With the eyeball pressed into her own eye socket, the spinner looked over Eddie with some concern. “You can do that? How can we trust you enough to give up our one eye?”

“Easy!” said Eddie. “Keep using the eye. I’ll treat one eye socket each. And when I come by again and your new eyes have grown, I’ll treat the other.” He held his hand over the spinner’s eyeless socket and filled it with his fake flesh. The did the same for one eye socket for the other two. “I’ll come back in about a month.”

Eddie left and again headed towards the entrance, where he would cause the water to rise up and cover the opening and turn the water back to stone before heading back to Indiana.

Dean and Sam Winchester arrived in Concordia, Kansas before noon. It was easy for Dean to find the street where the carnival had been and then to find the alley where the boys witnessed Charlie spitting webbing into a woman’s face. The door towards the other end of the alley was unlocked, so the men let themselves in with guns at the ready.

At the first level the boys debated over whether to knock on the door to the left or the right, but the left door opened and made that decision moot.

The slender, young woman with straight black waist-length hair stopped short when she saw the brothers.

“Uh, hey,” said Sam to the woman. “We’re, uh, looking for a guy named Charlie. Big guy. Tattoos. He worked the street fair last week.”

“Yeah. Charlie. He lives across the hall.” The woman pointed to the other door. “But he’s not well right now. Strange things have been happening to him...”

“Like spitting white gunk and growing extra legs?” asked Dean.

“Yes!” the woman exclaimed. “You guys know about this? I though the world was going all bizarro!”

“No. We specialize in the weird stuff,” said Sam. “I’m Sam and this is Dean.”

“I’m Tina. Charlie was my boyfriend, but now... He changed. He started spitting white webbing whenever he was startled. It wasn’t poisonous. I was hit with it a few times. But then he grew those four skinny black legs he keeps folded up inside the back of his shirt. I started freaking out, but he asked me not to tell anyone.”

“So, is Charlie in his apartment now?” asked Dean.

“Yeah.” Tina pulled Sam and Dean back just as they turned towards Charlie’s apartment.

“There’s something else.” Tina pointed at the base of the apartment door where small spiders scurried about. “Those things are all over his place.”

She added, “And last night Charlie started spitting out the webbing and spreading it around his body with his extra legs. It’s like he built a whole cocoon around himself and settled in. He wouldn’t say anything or even move after that. I was afraid to look this morning.”

“Dean,” Sam said. “I can sense him and I’m sure he’s dead. But there is something huge and inhuman in there with him. I’ll push open the door and you get ready to shoot. Tina, you need to get back into you apartment and lock yourself in.”

With Tina safely hidden away, Dean posed with his gun up and nodded. Sam turned the door knob, kicked open the door and stepped back out of the way.


	14. Chapter 14

Dean spied the human-sized cocoon first. Then the creature that was sucking the innards from it: a solid black and shiny smooth spider the size of a cement truck. It ignored their intrusion.

Dean shot it in the abdomen and the bullet ricocheted off of it.

“A spider’s heart is above its legs, in the cephalothorax,” suggested Sam. Maybe you could get a bullet through one of the joints in its legs.”

So, Dean shot it in the cephalothorax, which got its attention but did not appear to actually injure it. It turned to face the Winchesters.

“Run!” Sam and Dean dashed to the stairwell and out into the alley.

“We’re going to need the Colt 45 for this one,” said Dean as they reached Baby. “Did that look like a giant black widow to you? How did something that huge get into that room? And without anyone noticing?”

Trunk lid up. Gun out, this time one guaranteed to kill anything less powerful than a god. And back up the alley for another attempt.

In the hallway, Dean readied himself, then stepped in front of the doorway to the room and froze in place.

The creature was no longer there.

Sam came up behind his brother and exclaimed, “Where’d it go? I don’t sense it being anywhere around us.”

They poked around the cocoon, now flattened due to all the self-digested insides having been sucked out. Dozens of the other spiders scurried about, making it hard to distinguish between them and the remains of the monstrosity that had disappeared.

“The smell in here is familiar,” noted Sam. “Like it needs a good dose of Bloody Mary.

“Castiel,” Dean called over his phone. “We have a cocoon – what’s left of it – for you to deliver to Wogglebug’s lab.”

Sam knocked on Tina’s door and she answered it.

“Sorry,” Sam told her. “Charlie died sometime last night. Some creature we couldn’t identify, fed on the remains and is gone now. We’re having the cocoon taken to a special laboratory for study and maybe we can stop this from happening again. I’ll call in a report to the police about a missing man who we think is dead and leave it to them to clean up the mess. You can tell them what you want, but considering that we wouldn’t be able to explain the situation to them, you should probably just say all you know was that he was closed up in his room for days and is now gone.”

Tina nodded. “Thanks for coming, though. I didn’t know what to do.”

Sam hugged her and returned to Charlie’s apartment, where Castiel had already arrived and transported the cocooned remains to Wogglebug’s laboratory in Oz.

“So, Dean, do you think Sandra’s infected, too? Maybe we should asked Castiel to take the car and us to her place in Memphis.” Castiel nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, we should, “replied Dean. “But first, let’s eat. I know a tavern here that Sandra and I both liked, and I really need a drink right now.”

At this time, Eddie and the boys were in his blue Jeep traveling north on I-15 from his barn in Utah, headed towards the Great Salt Lake. From there, on to Idaho Falls to check in on the lad Zeke, who he and the Winchesters first met in Ely, Nevada and later literally rescued from Hell. After that visit, He planned to take them to Kalispell, Montana to confirm his purchase of the ghost cat lady’s property. He promised the boys a visit to the Montana Vortex on the way to the new property and they were excited enough that the long drive wouldn’t be too dull for them.

All this still allowed for checking out sights on the way that the billboards suggested was a cool family activity. Just so he reached Hinsdale in the badlands of eastern Montana in time for his next assigned miracle. They had their winter coats with them on this trip because northern Montana had become frigid early this year, and Timothy had told him that ice would be one of factors in the miracle.

Claire Novak was in Nebraska, headed west on I-80. Her destination was Denver, Colorado and a business called Carpathia Transport. The name was the best clue that it was run by gray-eyes if there ever was one.

After a good meal in Concordia, Castiel popped the Winchesters and himself to the Collins auto repair service in Memphis. There they got the address for Sandra Collins’ father. Sandra lived in an apartment built above the garage. After the Impala pulled into the drive, the trio ascended the steps to the apartment door and Dean knocked. No answer.

At the house, a woman looking very much like Sandra, but short-haired, taller, and with an even more powerful build, answered the door.

“We’re looking for Sandra Collins,” Dean announced. I was supposed to see her next week, but I wanted to tell her about Charlie.”

“Oh, Charlie from the carnival.” The woman seemed to be familiar with Sandra’s activities. “Well, Sandy’s off on one of her weekends with her bike group, the Black Widows, doing who knows what. I’m afraid you won’t be able to see her until Monday or Tuesday. This is some special outing this week. They have a club house.”

“Can you tell us where the club house is? We’re a bit concerned. She may be in danger.”

“Sure,” she said. “Let me get the key to Sandy’s apartment. The address will be there. I’m her sister Jill, by the way. Jill Collins.”

She let herself into Sandra’s apartment and the boys stayed outside the door. Once in, she stop short and stared at something in the front room that served as the kitchen. Then she pulled out her smart phone to make a call.

Dean saw it, too. A cocoon like Charlie’s, along the wall.

“Uh, I can take care of this,” he said. “We’ve dealt with this before.” He produced his faux FBI badge.

Jill looked at the badge suspiciously, then produced a scanner and moved it across Dean’s badge. Then she produced an FBI badge of her own. “I have one, too. Only mine is real. I assume the others have one. Show them to me guys.”

She looked at her scanner’s display. “Dean Winchester. I’ve heard of you. You’re barely outside the grid.”

“How about you?” Jill said to Sam. “Let’s have it.”

Sam was the wary one now, but he pulled his badge out and let the woman scan it, too. Then Castiel looked at the brothers and then followed suit.

“Sam Winchester and one unknown.” Jill smiled at them. “You boys are in luck. I’m in a highly classified division of the organization and we’ve been looking for you. In a good way, so don’t get defensive.”

“You’ve been looking for us?” asked Sam. “Why?”

“The FBI has an extremely secret branch that deals with the supernatural. Nobody knows about us. And we’ve been searching for your group to set up an alliance, just a casual one. We want to be aware of what you hunt and how many situations you fix. We don’t intend to interfere, you guys are doing what needs to be done. We can offer you cover when you have to deal with the authorities. Like real badges that link to our hidden system. So, who’s your quiet friend?”

“Castiel,” the angel said.

“Just Castiel?” Jill turned to the cocooned corpse. “I didn’t expect to meet you here at Dad’s though. Or to find this at my sister’s. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, her little biker group’s been playing with some sort of strange rituals. I wonder what she got herself into?”

“So you don’t think this is Sandra in the cocoon?” Sam asked, surprised.

“No,” said Jill. “The body is dissolved, but some things can’t dissolve. See here? I noticed it right off.” She took a kitchen knife from the kitchen counter and poked at a lump in the silky layers. The knife cut in and a man’s ring dropped out and hit the floor with a clunk.

“I’ve seen it before. They are always men.” Jill rolled the body over to show the four slender black spider legs folded neatly outside the cocoon in back. “We always find these cocoons drained of fluids with just some bone and metal parts left inside. One witness said she saw one man wrapped himself in his cocoon with these legs and then over a short time the body dissolved into goo. This is the very first one, though, that had the fluids still in it.”

“Yeah,” said Sam. “The one we came across was being drained by a gigantic spider. Like a boulder-sized black widow.”

“So this is one of my sister’s male acquaintances.” Jill said. “And Charlie was, too.”

“And Dean,” added Sam, ignoring the dirty look his brother directed at him. “We caught it in time and he’s okay.”

“That’s three, then.” Jill quietly asserted. “A black widow, Sandra’s men friends...the Black Widow bike club has to be a part of this.”

Castiel’s brows knitted together as he pondered. “So one of the women does something to a man...”

“They have sex, Cas,” Dean interjected. “They have sex.”

“Okay.” Castiel recovered his train of thought. “They have sex and the man is infected with a parasite that grows and causes him to cocoon himself and ejects an enzyme into the body that dissolves everything and produces a scent that signals some giant spider to come and feed on it.”

“Sandy’s group must be conjuring it. We need to get to her club’s meeting place.” She began sorting through her sister’s drawers and cabinets, looking for a clue as to where that might be.


	15. Chapter 15

“So, what’d you boys think of Utah?” asked Eddie. The blue Jeep was in Idaho, just a few miles from Idaho Falls.

“I liked the canyon best, the part where you drive up the side and look out at the mountains,” said Vladimir. “The Olympics place was okay.”

“How about the Great Salt Lake?”

“It was too stinky,” said Victor adamantly. “And I couldn’t walk barefoot.”

The Rich and Amy Overholt house in Idaho Falls was their next stop. They were the couple that took in Zeke. The house was small and white trimmed in a bold Caribbean coral. The boys insisted that it was pink and that pink is pink in spite of what else anyone called it.

The Jeep arrived with the threesome and pizzas that Eddie had offered to pick up on the way. Eddie recognized Zeke as the Jeep pulled into the drive. The boy looked a bit the worse for wear. Eddie had worried he would be.

Bringing Vladimir and Viktor with him was just the antidote for Zeke. They followed him into his bedroom and the three played video games for awhile and then went outside to explore a nearby woods. They exchanged emails and promised to keep in contact.

Inside Rich and Amy told Eddie about Zeke’s problem sleeping and his nightmares about his mother and long dark tunnels. Eddie promised them he had a friend who would be there later that day and fix that with just a few minutes with the boy.

A few hours after Eddie and the boys left for Kalispell, Montana, Castiel transported the Winchesters to the bunker for the night and then appeared at the Overholt home in Idaho Falls. He sat alone with Zeke on the patio out back and held his hands against the sides of the boy’s head for a few minutes and left shortly after. Zeke slept peacefully that night and thereafter remained the happy child he was intended to be.

Claire Novak called Sheriff Mills to tell her she had arrived in Denver. She slept in her car that night in view of the Carpathia Transport building so she could watch the comings and goings of the trucks there in the early morning.

The first vehicle, a semi truck, arrived about 5:30 in the morning and backed into one of the docks. The driver got out and punched at the call buttons by the dock door. Claire stashed away her coffee thermos, checked the dagger at her side, slipped out of her car, and after a few stretches raced to get there before the door opened.

The driver was let in and Claire caught the door before it closed completely. She waited a couple of minutes and then let herself in. By the looks of the people pouring out of the trailer onto the loading dock, she figured she would fit in with the crowd in her scruffy jeans and hoodie. After enough people filled the dock she slipped in among them.

By the gray eyes of the workers on dock, Claire knew they were the vampires that Anica assumed would be running the place. That meant that she was not to look them in the eye and needed to keep her mind occupied so she couldn’t be distracted enough for one of them to catch her eye. She mingled with the women and listened to the workers explain in English, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic about where the restrooms were in which they were to clean up and about the food set out for them at the back of the dock room. Peeing sounded like a good idea so she followed the flow into the woman’s room.

Back on the floor, the bread used for the ham sandwiches was a bit stale and the coffee was a bit on the bitter side, but the hostages wolfing it down weren’t in position to complain. As they ate, the gray-eyes led some of them down one of the corridors to other areas. Claire noticed that by then most of the people had been mesmerized.

One young girl crying and struggling as she was coerced into a side room caught Claire’s attention. She followed. Inside the room a gray-eye was tearing away the girl’s top. Whether it was to rape the child or to feed on her did not matter. Claire was behind the man and slit his throat with her dagger. She grabbed the child and pulled her back onto the dock and into the middle of the crowd being herded back onto the semi trailer.

As the trailer door was pulled down, Claire noticed one of the workers tapping at the screen of a smart phone. She reached for hers and confirmed her suspicion that the worker had her smart phone. So she was packed with other victims in a semi trailer with no means of contacting Jody, or the Winchesters, or Castiel. But she had her dagger and she remembered what Anica Tomesku once did to get help. On the inside of the trailer, Claire carved a large letter ‘O” with her dagger, and over it carved the letter ‘Z.’ The she sat back to wait.

Lunchtime in Kalispell, Montana. Eddie and the boys fed at the Chick-fil-a at the mall north of town and then drove downtown. Eddie handed Vladimir money and the smart phone. While Eddie met with someone at the court house to finalize purchase of the Lara Koos property in the Flatheads, Vladimir and Viktor were to make their way to Norm’s Soda Fountain a distance up Main Street and Eddie would meet them there. Eddie had no concerns for their safety. Any mugger would have to deal with hot-tempered Viktor setting him on fire.

Then a tour of the Montana Vortex, where the trio sat outside a crooked shack to pick out which of the pictures they took that they would send to Zeke’s parents to share with the boys’ new Idaho buddy. And, finally, up the side road to the former Koos property -- now Eddie’s Montana property -- and the ghost cats.

At the property, Eddie phoned Castiel, who had promised a tour of the place. It wasn’t long before Castiel appeared.

“I left Sam and Dean and a woman named Jill Collins outside a biker club in Memphis. If I get a call and disappear, it will be because they need me,” Castiel said. “But I’m available now.”

Vladimir and Viktor both had caught a cat. It was not difficult. With the loss of Lara Loos, the cats were swarming them for attention. “Castiel!” called Viktor anxiously. “Nobody is here to feed the kitties!”

“I’m sure they feed them when they cross into the other dimension,” said Castiel. He had assumed that was so, but fell deep in thought after he recalled that he hadn’t confirmed that before he refused to return Lara from the other dimension to her house here. Now he was not so sure.

“Won’t the wild animals eat them? There’s nobody to watch out for them!” added a concerned Vladimir.

“They’ll have a safe place after I get the barn built,” offered Eddie.

Castiel came to a firm conclusion. “I should be sure they are being care for. I’ll go to the other dimension and make sure.”

“We wanna go, too!” called out Vladimir. Viktor nodded excitedly.

Castiel looked to Eddie, who shrugged and said, “Okay. Let’s all go.”


	16. Chapter 16

In spite of being within the Memphis city limits, the small cement block building sat along a gravel road running above a stream. It was originally a meat rending business that closed decades ago and kudzu vines had recently overwhelmed the trees on either side of it, making it impossible to get down to the stream. From the outside one would assume the place was abandoned.

This is where Castiel left the Impala before Eddie called him. Demon-hunters Dean and Sam Winchester chatted with FBI secret agent Jill Collins now.

“So you’d have the usual badge and ID card,” Jill was saying, “but the ID number on the card will be a valid one tied to our branch. The phone number on the back side links to our office in Memphis. Castiel will need to come up with a surname. Any other hunter that either of you declare that you trust to carry out the job can be referred to me personally. If they pass my scrutiny, they’ll have the same protection as you.”

Dean was rubbing his face. It all sounded too perfect. But then, it worked for them in the past when Bobby Singer and then Garth Fitzgerald answered the phone at a fake FBI office. Why shouldn’t the FBI itself have a similar set-up?

Sam was a step ahead of his brother. “How about Dean and I try this first? Do we have a headquarters we can go to?”

“Sure,” said Jill. “When we finish here, I’ll direct you right to the building in downtown Memphis. Anyone with membership has access. My office is there.”

“Dean?” Sam looked over to his brother. “I’m sold. What do you think?”

“If we can back out at any time,” said Dean. “We’ve been burned before working with an outside organization.”

“You can,” offered Jill. “Of course you would have to move away from places you frequent while with us if you want to slip off the grid again. That would only make sense.”

“Oh you probably won’t find us if we leave,” Dean said with a smirk.

“I know what you mean,” Jill acknowledged. “You’re near Lebanon, Kansas. I tried to find your residence myself and kept ending up at a barn on the Edward Timms property. Witchcraft?”

“Something like that. Sam and Cas worked out a warding system using Enochian and Ozian magic.”

“I don’t need to access your place as long as you can access mine. If we go our own ways, the break will be at the Memphis office. We don’t necessarily stay put.” Jill clearly knew her business.

“So, shall we deal with this?” Sam said with lock pick in hand. Shortly he had the front door unlocked and opened.

Dean looked at the FBI agent for a minute and finally decided to himself, ‘Oh what the heck,’ and opened the trunk of the Impala.

Jill was quick to put her hand on the lid and looked over the weapons. “Wow! I’m super impressed. Why so much?”

“They specialize according to monster. That knife will kill a demon. Those bullets will kill witches. And this,” Dean held up the Colt 45, “will kill them and about everything else. If anything will kill a spider god, it will.”

“You da man then,” said Jill and followed him into the clubhouse. “I’m willing to be the sidekick this time.” Dean puffed up at that and added a swagger to his step.

But Sam knew flattery when it is being played. Jill knew people’s weaknesses.

The front room was shallow and wide and held a bar with only a few bottles in the cabinet behind it and a few tables with chairs scattered in no particular order. The smell was of alcohol and grease. They probably worked on their bikes in this room, suggested by the tires and random tools lying at one end of the long room.

A the other end of the room a wide doorway opened into a large room with a crudely painted pentagram and other symbols on the floor. It smelled of wax and cigarette smoke. A large metal sliding door crossed the back wall. Being poorly insulated, the room was chilly from the cold wind blowing through gaps in the door and walls.

Jill checked out a side room with a large work table covered with papers and drawings. ‘Black Widows Harleys’ was painted across the far wall with an oriental-style black widow spider caricature painted under it. There were cobwebs and dust. The room hadn’t been used in a long while. Through its window, one could see the slope down to the stream. Unlike at the sides of the building, this was completely cleared, except for a few yellow poplars and red oaks forming a canopy above.

They heard the motorcycles arriving and Jill told Sam and Dean, “My sister will be among them. I’m staying out of sight until something significant happens. You’re guys. If anything occurs it’ll involve you and I’ll be a distraction.” She stepped back into the dusty side room.

Four biker-clad women, including Sandra, and two men entered the front door. “It wasn’t locked,” exclaimed one of them. She walked behind the bar and pulled out chilled beers from a cooler and popped them open. “Let’s chill.”

Amidst the interplay, Dean stepped into the room and tapped Sandra on her shoulder, startling her.

“Oh! Dean! What are you doing here?” she said defensively. “I didn’t expect to see you until next week.” She hugged him and ran her hand over his shoulder and down his back.

“Expecting to find something back there?” Dean asked her. He cleared his voice and laughed as she practically jumped out of her skin.

“What?” Dean said. “Afraid you’d get something on you?”

One of the women grabbed a basket of munchies and pulled open the sliding door in back. “Hey! It’s nice outside. Let’s gather back by the creek!”

She came back in and noticed Sam. “Hey! We’re even numbers! Come on, handsome, join us out back.”

“Join us, Dean?” Sandra asked smoothly.

As the full party moved out back, Sam took Dean aside. “I sense powers of witchcraft in all four women. No sense of a supernatural being nearby, but the feeling that this is a trap is making me itch all over.”

“Well, stay alert,” Dean whispered back.

Out in the open, Sam again took Dean aside. “I’m not sensing anything yet, but all the spider webs running through the vines on either side of us are telling me bad things happen here.”

One of the women poured material, some liquid and some not, into a fire pit in the middle of the clearing. She chanted as she did so and Sandra joined in the chant.

“A chant for blessings from nature,” the brothers heard another woman said to her male companion. Soon all four women were standing around the pit and chanting, until one of them handed one of the men a long-barreled fire starter and asked him to light the contents of the pit.

“Shouldn’t there be logs or something?” He asked.

“This will burn better without wood. That would disturb the spirit of the trees around us.”

“Boy,” Dean said to Sam. “These guys must really be desperate for a good time to be mixed up with these broads.” Sam nodded.

All four women backed up towards the building as the guy set the fire starter in the pit and pressed the button. There was no visible fire, but a lot of black smoke that got thicker and rose higher.

All four women, Sam had already noted they were witches, began a new chant, louder and in unison from above the men.

A large round shape began to form and grow until the monstrous black widow spider the Winchesters had seen in Concordia stepped out of the smoke and snatched the fellow with the fire starter. He screamed as it raised him up to its face and pierced him with its fangs.


	17. Chapter 17

It was pitch black in the semi-trailer hauling Claire and a large number of captives. The truck had not stopped for a long time and would not until it reached its destination. It reeked of body odor and felt like the inside of an oven. Everyone was quiet, waiting.

At one point Claire noticed tiny sparks of light popping into view above everyone. More and more appeared until she could make out the outline of each person huddle against the sides of the trailer. Then one-by-one the passengers disappeared and finally Claire herself.

Later Claire reappeared along with two others. The ‘twinks’ disappeared, leaving the trio to talk among themselves.

“Our destination is Chicago,” said one voice.

“Chicago has one of Griswald’s buildings,” said Claire.

Another voice said, “Glinda’s staff will have everyone fed and sent back home with her magic belt. That just leaves our task when the door is raised. Meat people take care of the outside. Metal people charge the hall inside.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Claire.

Castiel transported Eddie, Vladimir and Viktor with himself from Eddie’s new property in Montana into a room in the other dimension, where Vladimir and Viktor found the cats immediately. Also a startled attendant, who remembered Castiel.

“Time for inspection,” Castiel announced to the intendant. “First, I’m looking for Larana, who lived as Lara Koos in my dimension.”

The attendant pointed to the opposite side of the room, where the hairy humanoids milled about. “She’s over there.”

At Castiel’s puzzled expression, she explained. “You wouldn’t send her back across the dimensions, so Tadrigrezzel tried to send her back himself. The same thing happened as did with our early pioneers. She can pass back and forth between dimensions, but like the others, she transformed into an extremely hairy being with limited mental capacity. You can try to communicate with her, but none of them respond to us except to accept food.”

Viktor looked towards where the attendant referred and announced, “Chewbacca’s family!”

“No,” said Vladimir, “Those are bigfoots.”

Eddie grinned and addressed the attendant. “The boys were concerned that the cats were not being fed and protected.”

“Both creatures are fed and kept clean and healthy when they are here,  
said the attendant. “As long as I’ve been here, none of them has gone over and not come back. Sometimes one might come back ruffled, but none are ever seriously injured.”

“Good enough for you guys?” Eddie asked the boys. Vladimir and Viktor nodded.

“Is Tadrigrezzel nearby?” Castiel then asked the attendant, who nodded and pointed in the direction of the lab.

Castiel walked into the hall and into the laboratory to notice that nothing had changed. People were still seated in chairs cocooned among electronic devices and others were still busy at the monitors surrounding the lounge area.

Castiel took in the scene, and returned to where Eddie and the boys were.

“We’re leaving,” Castiel announced and all four disappeared to reappear at the gap in the mountainside. This was where Dean had destroyed the other-dimensional organs that were hanging in suspension. Now there were new ones. The project hadn’t stopped.

“Don’t get near those,” Castiel ordered Eddie. “Just destroy them, bury the whole gap.” Then he popped back into the laboratory.

Eddie dutifully turned the sides of the opening into water, caused the water to fill in the gap, and turned it into lead. 

In the laboratory, Castiel appeared beside Tadrigrezzel and told him, “You did not halt your program. I warned you.”

Castiel walked to one end of the room and there occurred around him a bright light accompanied by thunder. Otherwise the room darkened, as electrical circuits popped, causing everyone to rise out of their seats and look towards Castiel displaying his deadly true angel essence.

Instantly the laboratory was littered with dead bodies with their eyes burned out from the sight. The same thing happened to anyone viewing the room through the digital cameras.

With no one left alive, Castiel left the higher authorities of Pedsh to figure it out and returned to Eddie at the now lead-enclosed mountainside. He nodded his approval and transferred them all to the house.

In Memphis, Dean dispatched the giant spider swiftly with his Colt. But with the witches still chanting, another giant spider emerged from the heavy smoke. It went after the other man who ran towards the stream but was halted by an invisible barrier. Hemmed in by the barrier, he was also caught and killed before Dean could aim and take out the beast.

The spider fell back dead and its fallen body pinned Dean to the ground with his hand with the gun immobile. Dean struggle as a third beast rose out of the smoke and lumbered towards him.

Sam raced in to help. His weapon wasn’t going to kill this thing, but he searched for a sensitive spot to hit. He decided and shot it in the eye. The eye wasn’t harmed in the least, but the spider’s attention was taken away from Dean and towards Sam.

The chanting witches proceeded to move forward, making the battle area smaller and smaller. Sam shot one of them, but her enchantment prevented bullets from harming her. ‘Wrong bullets,’ Sam told himself as both the witches and the spider closed in on him.

To Sam’s surprise he heard a cracking sound and a witch dropped to the ground. Then another one and another until only Sandra was left standing.

Sandra turned and said, “How did you get here?” before also being shot.

Jill stepped out of the shadow of the building and stood over Sandra. “Bad girl, Sis.”

She dropped her gun and holstered up a larger weapon with which she marched past Sam and towards the third spider. She had Dean’s flame thrower.

“Take care of your brother,” Jill ordered Sam. She lifted the weapon and aimed at the spider’s face. Flames engulfed it. Finally, something that could actually injure it.

Another stream of fire and the spider backed off and disappeared back to where it came from. With it gone, Jill walked down to Sam and Dean to help.

Sam had a plank and was hammering it under the second spider’s body. That done, he shoved the brick under the plank and, with Jill’s help, leaned on one end of the plank, causing the spider’s body to lift enough for Dean to wiggle out from under it. Dean grinned up at Jill standing over him with the flame thrower.

“I remembered the witch-killing bullets in the trunk and let myself in to get them,” Jill said. “And I spied this baby.” She hoisted up the flame thrower. You boys have another project I can help with?”

“How are you with vampires?” Dean asked.

“My favorites. Natives or gray-eyes?” Jill asked.

“Would you happen to know Eric Griswald?” Sam asked her.

“No,” she said. “Is he an Alpha?”

“You’re in for a real treat,” said Dean.


	18. Chapter 18

The semi backed up to the dock at Griswald’s complex in Chicago. Two gray-eyed vampires were on the dock and lifted the truck door. To their surprise this was not the arrival of the lunch wagon. The only ones in the semi was a young woman wielding a dagger, a metal man pulling out his sword, and another metal man with an axe over his shoulder.

The vampires had no time to think. In an instant Captain Fyter lopped off the head of one and Nick Chopper neatly removed the head of the other. The two began their march into and down the halls of the complex. Claire pulled down the semi door and went outside.

“That’s it,” she told the semi-driver. “You can pull away.” She signed his papers and sent him on his way. Then Claire headed to the front door. Her task was to prevent anyone fleeing from getting out and she had business as soon as she passed through the door.

The whole mission took about an hour and netted the team twenty-three vampires killed and zero victims to care for. Eventually another vampire will discover the bodies and notify Griswald and he will have to clean up the mess. It wasn’t the team’s problem. Captain Fyter drew the ‘O’ and the ‘Z’ over it on a wall and the trio waited for someone in Glinda’s ballroom to notice and call them there.

Eddie, Vladimir and Viktor stayed the night in the Koos house. Castiel visited a bit and vanished to find out how Dean and Sam fared in Memphis. This was the first time Eddie used a wood burning fireplace, but he figured it out quickly. Vladimir and Viktor brought in food and the sleeping bags and they were set for the night.

The next morning the trio woke up to heavy snow. They loaded up the Jeep and Eddie steered it back to Highway 2 and headed east through Glacier National Park and along the winding Milk River towards the badlands of Montana. Many hours later they arrived in Hinsdale and lunched at Sweet Memories and made plans.

At the appropriate time, the trio left the restaurant and walked past the school to reach the city park along the river. The cold wind threatened to cut through the layers of clothing they wore. The river was rough and skifts of snow covered the patches of thin ice.

“This ice doesn’t look like it can hold any weight,” Eddie announced to Timothy, his core soul.

“That’s the point,” replied Timothy.

Eddie and Viktor situated themselves under a sycamore at the river’s edge. Vladimir was stationed a few trees upstream where the child was destined to cross. He was loaded with a thermos of hot chocolate and blankets for his part of the rescue. No one else was in the park, it was simply too cold.

When they heard the sound of a dog barking, Eddie scooted himself down to the river and turned a stretch of the ice into water. Viktor pulled off his coat and changed into his dragon form. Eddie looked up to see the small dragon wearing boys pants and shirt, with his butt twitching in anticipation. They were ready.

It wasn’t long before a golden retriever came bounding across the field across the river and onto the ice. It slid a bit but made it across with no problem. An excited heavily-bundled child screaming with glee followed a long distance behind. She ran onto the ice, but before she got far, the ice cracked loudly and she plummeted through it into the river. All three could see the red mittens clawing at the edge of the hole in the ice.

Eddie reached into the river and turned the water into air from himself to up near the hole. The flowing water turned into blowing air creating a frigid breeze as it crossed the barrier. Fish and branches were flung out of the barrier and onto the river bed. The red mittens disappeared into the hole above it, but the child did not come through the barrier. Viktor was over the gap, ready to catch her as she emerged, but looked back at Eddie puzzled when she did not appear. Vladimir stood with the blankets at the river’s edge, equally purplexed.

“Where is she?” Eddie called up to Timothy. 

“Where is she?” Timothy called to Shebbeth, who was reading the child’s volume in the Hall of Records.

“She was pulled into an under current,” replied Shebbeth. “Go farther upstream, Eddie. Much farther.”

Eddie moved the barrier upstream, past where the hole was and even farther past a sycamore. Finally, there she was, entangled among the underwater roots of the sycamore. Viktor dove down to her and pried her out from among the twisted roots and flew her to Vladimir.

Vladimir pulled a blanket over himself as he stood over the child. Her body was too cold to find a pulse if there was one, so he began chest compressions on her. “Come on! You’re out of the water now. Breathe!”

Eddie released the water and came running up to the mounded blanket and a worried Viktor standing outside it. When he pulled up the blanket, the child was coughing up water and a relieved Vladimir smiled up at Eddie and nodded. Viktor ran for the thermos.

Eddie carried the bundled child, with Vladimir, Viktor and the dog in tow. They entered the restaurant where the staff and patrons rose in alarm. “She’s okay,” said Eddie as he sat the bundled child on a chair. “She fell through the ice in the river. Does anyone know who she is?”

A patron who recognized her dashed outside to find the mother. Another pulled off the girl’s soaked outer garments while the hostess brought some hot soup. Vladimir grabbed the blanket and took it to the Jeep. Eddie and Viktor joined him once the girl’s mother arrived. It would be easier for them to hop into the Jeep and disappear before someone wondered how the three rescuers managed to pulled the child out of the river and still remain totally dry themselves.

“Hamburgers and fries at the next town,” announced Eddie as they approached Glasgow down the road. “And ice cream for a good job done.”

Castiel joined them with plans to take them afterwards to the Vam San in St. Louis. He had earlier gathered up Sam and Dean Winchester with Jill Collins in Memphis and took them there, and shortly after picked up Claire Novak and Sheriff Mills from Sioux Falls. The full vampire-hunter coalition were to be gathered with Anica Tomesku to finalize plans on what to do about the Eric Griswald vampire complexes in the East.


	19. Chapter 19

“I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” said Jill Collins. “Only because the government doesn’t know it. ICE can easily close down Carpathia Transport in Denver, right after the place is cleansed of the vampires. The government agencies are unaware of demons and monsters and we want to keep it that way. If the public accepted their existence, they would see them everywhere in their daily lives and we would lose track of the real ones.”

“Do you need us to remove the vampires?” asked Anica Tomesku.

“First I’ll see if we have agents available. There aren’t many of us.”

“Okay. How about the Carpathia Transport records?” asked Andros Pesti.

“You are the record-keeper, aren’t you?” said Jill. “Yeah we’ll get the records. How about I set you up in my office? I have all of the resources you need and I don’t understand. You can load your records into the system plus what we get from Carpathia Transport and help co-ordinate the take-down of the organization. Maybe even a few other situations I’m looking into.”

Andros seemed very interested. “How many operate out of you office?”

“Right now, just me. I’m a field agent. But if you are interested, I can move you to Memphis. You would be safer there than at this place.”

Andros mulled it over.

“We can ship you our blue solution, Andros,” Anica said. “You won’t really have to stay here and I know you have been leery of being caught since you fled Griswald.”

Andros perked up and nodded to Jill.

“And speaking of safety here at the Vam San, we can expect retaliation from the East Coast, so we will need an advantage. I’m going to have some of us armed. Can you recommend weapons, Dean? I’ve already looked into a nearby gun range for practice.”

“Can do,” said Dean.

“Good. How about going out with Hank and Joseph to look over guns and then go with some of us to the gun range?”

Dean looked at Sam, who nodded. “Looks like we’re free.”

“That’s a relief. I’m leaving for Vienna tomorrow and plan to find some support from the Demon Hunters Society. It’s their fault that we gray-eyes are in America in the first place. Then I have a funeral for Beryx in Cluj. So Vladimir and Viktor will be going with me. Are you still available to take us the Europe, Castiel?”

“Castiel’s Teleport Service at your disposal,” said Castiel.

“And will you be okay without the boys for a few days, Eddie?”

“Oh I’ll try,” mused Eddie. He had plans and welcomed a few days relief from watching over them.

The conference was interrupted by the arrival of the boys in question. Vladimir and Viktor came racing into the lounge with great excitement. “Mama! Amazing Bob is here!” shouted Vladimir.

The chair that always sat outside Amazing Bob’s home in Brammerang popped into view between Eddie and Sam. And Bob walked in behind the boys. He walked up to Anica and whispered, “My condolences, Anica, for the loss of your husband, Beryx. I wish I could remedy that, but my omnipotence is in my own universe, not Chuck’s. However, I can and have already modified reality enough that Beryx’s full body is en route to Cluj. I’m aware you have not told you son there was only a head. I’m pleased to say that now you won’t have to.”

Then Amazing Bob was suddenly seated in his chair. “Besides my wish to visit Anica, I have a message for Eddie, Dean, Sam and Castiel. The bodies of Rose and Hannah that were left buried under my town are no longer there. I do not know what that means in this world, but they are currently nowhere in this world and it’s up to you to learn if they might return alive. If I could foresee their future, I would tell you. The Rose and Hannah of this planet have no parallel with the Roses and Hannahs on the other planets I am watching.”

With that, Amazing Bob stood up, his chair disappeared and Amazing Bob took the hands of Vladimir and Viktor and led them out of the room. “So, tell me,” he told them as they left. “How have you been since you left Brammerang?”

Once the boys were out of the room, Eddie spoke up. “If Hannah is likely to return, she may come for Viktor. It’s probably a good thing that he will be with you in Europe, Anica.”

“If Rose and Hannah are not in this world, where could they be?” asked Sam. “Hell? The magical realm? Where could dead soulless witches go? And who would be powerful enough to bring them back to life?”

“And if they can return to life on Earth, what other powerful witches could return?” asked Eddie “I need to talk to Glinda.”

With that the meeting ended.

Castiel began sending members to their homes. First Dean and Sam suddenly appeared in their bunker in Kansas. Then Anica, Eddie, Vladimir and Viktor were sent to Eddie’s place in Indiana so the boys could pack for their trip to Vienna the next day.

Castiel next turned to Jodie Mills and the two looked for Claire Novak. Hank had Claire’s attention in the hallway.

“So, when we are at the gun range, will you be there?” Hank asked Claire. “I bet I’d do much better if you were there to teach me. I might get as good as you!”

Claire gave him a quick dismissive look, but didn’t say ‘no.’ And Hank was left to guess what that meant as she and Sheriff Mills disappeared.

“You are the last one,” Castiel announced to Jill Collins. “Is Andros coming along?”

“Not yet, Cas,” said Jill. “I’ll have to set things up for him first. Take me to the biker clubhouse. I need to decide what to do with Sandra’s body. If you leave me there I can take her bike back into town.”

With that Castiel took Jill with him to beside her sister’s Harley outside the clubhouse. All was quiet outside the building.

“Thanks,” said Jill. “It seems safe enough.”

“Call out if you need me and I will return,” said Castiel. He disappeared, leaving her alone by the roadside.

Actually there were two tasks Jill had. First, to check on her sister’s body. The second was to return to the dusty side room in the back of the clubhouse. There was something she saw there that she really needed to take with her.

Jill counted the motorcycles and noticed there were three extra ones. So other club members were there and they would have discovered the carnage out back. She stepped back into the road and looked over the top of the clubhouse. There was black smoke rising from the back yard. Another ceremony was going on. She would have to be careful.

‘Okay, I can call Cas if I need to,’ Jill thought to herself as she entered the front door.


	20. Chapter 20

Inside the Black Widows clubhouse, Jill crossed the bar room into the large back room where he heard voices out back. The sliding door was opened just wide enough for people to pass through in single file. Jill peeked out into the back yard.

The spider bodies were gone. So were the bodies of the two unfortunate victims and of all four witches. So much for having to deal with her sister’s body.

Partly enveloped in the black smoke was a stern-looking tall woman dressed in layers of black silk that flowed around her in the breeze. She (it?) was looking down over three biker women praising her. Jill noticed the red hourglass tattoo on one biker’s lower back. So the deity had a human form and there were still disciples trained to call her.

Jill slipped back and turned to the dusty side room. Under the window she found what she came for: a book. More specifically, a spell book. She took it up and looked out the window to see the three bikers leaving the deity and heading towards the building.

She was not ready to take on witches without the appropriate weapon. It was time to scram.

Outside and on her sister’s Harley, Jill decided starting it there would call attention. So she rolled the bike out onto the road and out of sight and hearing before starting it up and riding into town.

She stopped at her father’s house, where he greeted her outside.

“What are you doing on Sandra’s bike?” he asked.

“She let me borrow it for a week,” Jill replied. “Say, Dad, have you seen her?”

“Not for about a week,” he said.

“Well, I’m going up to her apartment. I have a key.” Jill waved as their father returned to the house, and climbed the stairs to her sister’s apartment above the garage.

Jill noticed a commotion in the apartment as she unlocked the door and opened it. The door pushed against a large form inside the first room. The giant spider. It was feeding on the cocooned man in the front room. Jill’s intrusion did not seem to bother it, but Jill still took the steps two-at-a-time all the way to the bottom before turning around to look.

The monster continued at its task in the kitchen. It was too large to come through the front door without tearing apart the apartment and Jill was sure it would just go away the same way it came. After about half-an-hour it did just that. The sound of feeding stopped and the spider was gone.

Jill cautiously ascended the steps and looked into the front room. The monster was gone. The cocoon, no longer with its dissolved contents, was deflated.

She pulled out her smart phone and dialed Castiel’s number. “Cas! It’s Jill. Hey, could you let Dean and Sam know that there are more members in the biker club and they called up the deity. Yeah. It has a human form, a woman. And I just now found the monster spider feeding on the body in Sandra’s apartment. Think Wogglebug would want the remains? Okay.”

Jill closed her phone and waited until the cocooned body disappeared. That done, she rode Sandra’s bike to her space in a parking garage downtown. Then up to the office and her apartment down the hall. She decided that, after that eerie experience, it would be good to have Andros at the office and living nearby. Even if she would probably be protecting him rather than the other way around.

Early the next morning, Scraps was playing outside the Timms home with Vladimir and Viktor.

“Oh, ho! Faux foe, fall fully ye fellow afore me!” Scraps called out as she swung a laser saber toy over Viktor’s head. Viktor stopped flailing his own saber and dropped to the ground giggling. Vladimir and Castiel stood nearby, amused.

Anica came out of the house with a suitcase and piled it on top of two others on a picnic table. “That’s it! You kids ready to go?”

The game ended, Scraps offered her best wishes before Castiel sent her off to Oz and gathered the other three for their trip. Eddie was standing cross-armed at his doorway.

“Just pop us into our room in Vienna,” said Anica. Castiel nodded and he, Anica, Vladimir and Viktor disappeared. With that, Eddie pulled out a couple grocery bags of supplies and put them into his Jeep.

Soon he was off to Chicago and the hospital nursery where there were newborn quintuplets. He plugged his iTunes into the car radio. It had been a while since he used it, but with the boys gone he knew the drive would be too quiet for him otherwise.

It wasn’t that long before Eddie found himself outside the nursery in the maternity ward, looking through the window with a couple other men. He looked down to his hand and watched a glowing orb raised out of his palm and sink back into it. Then he located the row of five bassinets where the quintuplets were.

This wasn’t a case of souls leaving this time. The five premie newborns had not been claimed by any souls this time, in anticipation of Eddie arriving with his five rescued lost souls. Eddie confirmed the fact with his core soul Timothy and tightened the doctor’s gown he brought in with him from the Jeep. Clipboard in hand and head lowered, he marched into the nursery behind one of the nurses.

A quick pass over the quintuplets’ bassinets and Eddie released the five orbs that easily slipped into the five bodies. Assured that all five souls had claimed their bodies, he headed back out into the hallway.

A frail old woman dressed in an exotic silk sari-styled gown rose from her seat as he passed by her. She smiled and said, “I came to see you work. It is satisfying to know that your good deed to us is a common habit of yours.”

She lifted a patch over one eye and uncovered an eyeball just beginning to protrude through the flesh in that eye. “I am Lachesis. My sisters and I are so grateful for your kindness and look forward to your return. We believe you should be rewarded for your selfless deeds, so we will have a gift for you when you come.”

She smiled and walked around the corner. When Eddie turned the same corner, she was gone.

“Timothy, who is Lachesis?” Eddie asked as he left the hospital.

“Shebbeth?” Timothy passed on to an alter-ego.

“I’m too old to know,” Shebbeth responded. “She’s not a human. I don’t have a book in the Hall of Records.”

“Anyone?”

Erin jumped in here. “Greek mythology. She’s one of the three Fates, the one who determined how long one would live and how easy a life the person would have. They lived in the underground world of Hades.”

“There you go, Eddie,” said Timothy. “You met a deity.”

“I met all three of the Fates when I rescued these five lost souls from Hell.” Eddie pondered.

“There’s something more urgent for you to consider when you get home,” added Timothy. “Neighbors have noticed your barn is on fire.”

Eddie exceeded speed limits the rest of the way home. As Timothy had announced, his barn was aflame. No firefighters had arrived yet.

It was just as well. Eddie drew the air away from the barn and the flames were smothered. He called 911 to let authorities know the fire was under control and no longer an emergency. A sheriff was sure to come by in a day or two to check for a cause, but nothing to worry about now.

He pulled open the barn door and looked up at the charred ceiling. There was a burnt wood smell, but it was not intense. He walked into the back room to check on the barn cats and noticed they had all fled. Cassandra slipped in through the pet door now that she was knew Eddie was back and everything was okay again.

Out back, Castiel’s bee hives were untouched by the flames. It looked like only part of the barn roof was seriously damaged. Structurally, the walls were sound and mostly needed power washing and repainting. Eddie returned to his Jeep to pull it closer to the house. It would not be taken into the barn until the repairs were done.

Beside the Jeep stood the cause of the fire, a stout, ebony-haired women with a black leather headband and matching smock over her clothes. Sparks scattered as she flicked her fingers on one hand.

“Why are you here, Hannah?” Eddie asked the witch.

“Where’s my dragon?” she demanded.


	21. Chapter 21

“I know it came here. Tell me where it is or I’ll set this entire place on fire!” Hannah demanded of Eddie. She pointed her pike menacingly at him.

“Viktor is my son,” Eddie responded. “You won’t find him. And I am not about to let you get your hands on him.”

“Your wha...pssht,” sputtered Hannah. “It’s an animal! It’s mine. Where is it?”

Flames swirled in the grass around the witch in increasingly large circles, over to the barn and right up to Eddie’s feet.

Eddie was unconcerned. He caused the air over the flames to move away, leaving the vacuum to starve out the flames. 

The lack of oxygen didn’t seem to harm Hannah. It did, however, make it impossible for whatever she was ranting about to be heard. She pulled out a small straw figure from behind her leather apron and rubbed her thumb over it and mouthed something until a red goo oozed out of the fibers. She held it out towards Eddie and grinned.

Eddie knew it was one of the spells that Hannah and Rose had used to cause illnesses and deformities. He could feel the pain. He saw the boils forming on his hands and felt them on his face as his hands brushed across it. The pain caused him to drop to the ground from the agony.

Once on the ground, though, it was Eddie’s turn again. With a hand touching the ground, he caused a line of lead to form from his hand to Hannah’s left boot. The boot turned into lead and then the skin on Hannah’s leg up to her knee.

He gave her a few seconds to realize her predicament before releasing his control over the air about her so she could hear him say, “Undo your spell, or I will turn all of your body into lead.” Eddie smiled slightly as Hannah tried unsuccessfully to move her leg.

“Never! You will writhe in agony until you die!” Hannah touched the tip of her pike to her leg above the skin-turned-to-lead. A thin line of fire severed the leg. As she held the pike over her head and her body lifted into the air, Eddie saw coils of steel emerge from the stump of her leg and begin to form a framework of steel muscle and bone.

Smoke billowed about her as Hannah rose higher into the air. Soon it obscured any view of the witch and growing metal limb. From within Eddie heard, “I’ll find my dragon. And then I’ll be back to end your pitiful existence!” The smoke dissipated and she was gone.

“Well, that was dumb of me,” Eddie thought to himself. “I should have turned her totally into a lead statue at the start.” He laid himself back and tried to find a more comfortable position but there was none. He hurt all over.

It was hard for Eddie to determine how long he laid there in the barnyard until he felt a finger touch one of his boils and a voice say, “They won’t heal.”

That would be Castiel, trying to heal Eddie’s body.

Another voice said, “That’s because it’s magic. They won’t go away until the magician dies. Eww, what it this? There’s a real, bloody leg inside this thing!”

And that would be Captain Fyter, just now examining the lead boot. Only the skin of the leg inside it had been turned into lead.

“How’d you guys find me?” Eddie gasped weakly.

“The OZ sigil is still on the side of the barn from the last time I was here,” explained the captain. “We can see faint images through the mirrors in Glinda’s ballroom. Glinda seems to know this witch. She was fuming and declaring she would take care of this. I saw her storm out of the ballroom with an entourage hurrying behind her as I came through the mirror.”

“I just ordinarily pop in now and then for no particular reason,” Castiel dead-panned.

“So, Glinda is going to do something?” Eddie tried to reposition himself, but whimpered and settled back down.

“I’m going back to see what is going on,” Captain Fyter said. “I’ll send back someone to give some medical aid.”

He signaled to be returned to Oz and disappeared. Soon there appeared a plain-looking teenage girl with brown hair pulled back into pig-tails and wearing a green dress with a pattern of lions, bears, and monkeys on it and carrying a covered basket. “How can I help?”

Castiel looked over the young girl and replied, “First we need to get Eddie to a more comfortable place.”

Immediately Eddie was lying in his bed with Castiel and the girl beside it.

The girl looked about in amazement and exclaimed, “My! And I thought people got about quickly in Oz!”

Eddie moaned, “Ow...”

“Why don’t you go visit Timothy in Heaven for a while, Eddie?” Castiel suggested. “There’s no point in you staying in your body while you are in pain. Shebbeth can tell you what’s going on down here.”

“Than...kay...bah...” Eddie’s body relaxed and his eyes closed.

The girl pulled a jar of ointment out of the basket and screwed off the lid. “Boy! Things have changed here.”

She carefully dabbed a bit of the ointment on Eddie’s boils before pausing and exclaiming, “How rude of me! Hello there!” She held her hand out to Castiel. “My name is Dorothy. Dorothy Gale. I’m originally from Kansas.”

“Castiel,” Cas replied. “An angel of the Lord.”

“No wonder you could send Eddie to Heaven,” Dorothy mused. “So who is this witch he had a run-in with?”

“Her name is Hannah.”

“Hannah?” Dorothy turned pale.

“Yes, Hannah. We met her before in Brammerung. Amazing Bob raised her and another witch. We thought Eddie had killed both of them, but apparently one has to destroy every bit of their body to keep them from rising again. So both of them are back.”

“Two of them?” Dorothy ventured. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but what is the other witch’s name?”

“Rose.”

“Oh, Lord,” said Dorothy. “I know them. I thought I had killed them both.”

“You once killed them?” Now Castiel was concerned.

“Yes. My house was lifted in a tornado and dropped on Rose in Munchkinland in Oz. Later I melted her sister Hannah with a bucket of water in the land of the Winkies. They are nasty, evil old hags. The wicked witches of the East and West of Oz.”

Castiel pondered her words emotionlessly. He hadn’t read Baum’s first book about Oz.

Dorothy pulled open Eddie’s shirt and resumed treating his sores. As she did, she absentmindedly sang softly to herself, “Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead. Wake up, sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed. Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead. She's gone where the goblins go, below - below - below...”

She paused and thought for a minute, then explained to Castiel. “The Munchkins were singing this after Rose was killed. It stuck with me. Do you know were the goblins go?”

“I don’t even know what goblins are,” admitted Castiel.

“They are as evil as creatures can be,” Dorothy began. “They have green skin, long pointy ears and and long bulbous nose. They pop up out of nowhere in the middle of the night and pull children–usually bad children–out of their beds. They throw a bag over them and take them with them when they disappear. The children are never seen again. That’s what Aunt Em once told me. And that’s what the Ozians say.”

“So do they disappear into another dimension?” asked Castiel, thinking of the creatures he and the Winchesters dealt with in Montana.

Dorothy shrugged her shoulders.

Castiel decided that, at first chance, he would pay a visit to Eddie’s new barn outside Kalispell and investigate the other dimensional link there.

At the same time, Anica Tomesku was settling Beryx’s estate in Vienna. She turned loose Vladimir and Viktor on the streets of the city, warning them to behave. No claws and no climbing or flying. Vladimir snatched up the cell phone and off they ran.

Anica completed business and was headed toward the street when the message came from Vladimir.

“Mama! Viktor’s changing into a dragon! He can’t help it! His tail popped out and his eyes are dragon eyes! Now his wings are trying to break through his shirt! People are coming this way!”

“Okay, okay,” said Anica. “Calm down. Where are you?”

“In an alley off of...of...Tooth Lobbin?”

‘Tuchlauben,’Anica thought to herself. ‘That’s just a block away.’

She hurried out into the parking lot and leapt into the rental car.


	22. Chapter 22

The windows of Tiffiny’s, Cartier, Rolex, and Jimmy Choo’s displayed the extravagance of Tuchlauben, a boulevard in the Golden Quarter of Vienna. And now Vladimir and Viktor were peering over the gelatos and torts in Zanoni & Zanoni. They were two well-behaved twelve-year-olds.

That’s when Viktor’s tail poked out of the back of his pants.

“Viktor!” Hissed Vladimir.

“It did it on its own!” Viktor hissed back.

“Let’s go.” Vladimir turned his friend toward the door and pushed.

Outside, Viktor’s fingernails were growing. Vladimir noticed that his eyes had the dragon’s slitted pupils, and scales were beginning to form on his face.

They looked for a place for shelter. There were fire escape landings and roof tops, but Vladimir remembered his mama saying, ‘no climbing or flying in public.’ But there was an alley up ahead and the boys scooted in that direction. They could climb up from inside the alley.

They stepped off the street into the alley, but before they could climb, Vladimir spied a small group of teenagers approaching them from the other end.

‘Was im Himmel ist?” the boys heard. One girl squinted her eyes to make out the details of poor Viktor hunched down by a dumpster and trying to squeeze behind it. The teens gathered around him, fascinated, and tried to guess what they were looking at.

“Es ist ein Krokodil?”

“Nein! Kein Krokodil.”

The squint-eyed girl reached to touch Viktor and he tried all the more to disappear into the dark corner he was in. But the smoke and sparks emoting around him just made things worse.

“Vielleicht ein Komodowaran?”

Viktor’s wings finally pushed through his shirt and spread out over him.

“Es ist ein Drache!” The teens stepped back in shock. “OMG!”

The white rental car with Anica driving stopped at the end of the alley, then backed up and pulled in.

Anica approached the group and announced “Kinder!”

Surprised, they looked towards her and she had them mesmerized. “Es ist der Hund des junge verkleidet. Akzeptieren Sie und verlassen Sie und dann vergessen Sie, was Sie sah.”

The group turned and walked on out of the alley. “Ach. Nur ein Hund.”

“I told them Viktor was a dog in a costume and to go away and forget it,” Anica answered the boys’ puzzled expressions.

Anica motioned the boys to the car. Viktor crawled in back and crouched down. Vladimir joined him and patted down Viktor’s wings.

The car left Vienna on its way to Cluj in Romania. This had been more than enough of an adventure for a day.

Professor Wogglebug was at the Vam San where he had come to leave his latest containers of the blue solution that kept the resident vampire’s bloodlust at bay and prevented the skin of the gray-eyed vampires from burning in sunlight.

He turned from the containers and listened to the conversation between FBI secret agent Jill Collins and the vampire accountant Andros Pesti. They were examining the spell book Jill had retrieved from the Black Widows biker clubhouse.

“I tried to make it out, but it isn’t in English,” Jill was saying.

“It’s Greek.”replied Andros.

He noted Jill’s one raised eyebrow and continued. “Well, I was a monk at a monastery in Hungary when I was turned some three hundred years ago. I transcribed Hebrew, Greek and Latin and it seems the languages have stuck with me...Here’s the spell to summon the goddess.”

Jill hunched over Andros and the book. “What’s the goddess’ name?”

“Arachne.”

“The weaver whose pissed off the goddess Athena?

“That’s the one. Athena challenged her to a weaving contest.They both wove stories, Athena about the follies of men and Arachne about the follies of the gods. Arachne won the contest and it angered Athena, who turned her into a spider. And you know what some female spiders do to the males after sex. Arachne wouldn’t be a goddess but she is still a supernatural being with god-like powers. Nothing I’ve read so far says how the book came to be, or how it got into the hands of humans. But it did and as long as she has a human following, she has power on Earth.”

Jill tried to conceive the possibility. “So....where exactly would Arachne be now?”

“In Hade’s underground world.” said Andros. “The reign of the Greek gods ended, so they and all humans who worshiped them should be there.”

“Underground...underneath us?”

“I guess so.”

“And my sister would be there, too?” Jill sat back to mull over the possibility of actually finding Sandra.

Professor Wogglebug considered their conversation as he walked through the back door to where a shooting range had been set up. His mind was on the spider bodies he had been studying back in his university lab in Oz.

Backboards with targets pinned to them were lined along the forest’s edge. Residents of the Vam San and their instructors were set up in the drive, working on their shooting skills.

Claire Novak was helping Hank with his aim. She had her arms under his, showing him how to line up the gun sights. Hank was blushing profusely and his brother Joseph was heckling him over his embarrassment.

Claire finally turned and stood nose-to-nose with Joseph. “Go train with the Winchesters. Git!”

Joseph found more fodder for heckling with the brothers Winchester. Dean was explaining to one of the other residents how to aim. Sam rolled his eyes at his brother’s attempt, asking Dean how he could teach someone to aim when he no longer has to aim to hit the target.

“Hey! I still remember how to do it the old way!” Dean whined. “Leave me alone, Sammy! I got this.,,”

Joseph chuckled at the brotherly exchange. He grabbed a shotgun and asked, “Tell me again how learning to shoot this thing will help me stop another vampire. It can’t kill them.”

“True,” said Dean. “But you won’t be trying to shoot them to death. You’ll be blowing a hole through their head or chest to slow them down enough to slit their throats before they recover. It’s your advantage against a foe who matches your own abilities.”

He took the shotgun from Joseph, aimed in a generally upward direction, and pulled the trigger. The slug shot up, then curved downward to reach the target, blowing a hole in it to totally remove the center circle. Dean drew his finger across his own throat, saying, “Then slit.”

Dean turned to his brother and said, “You know, Sammy, we need to add a bayonet to the end of this,” and turned back to Joseph, saying, “With a bayonet. Pow!” And once again he drew his finger across his own throat, saying, “Then slit...”

Back near Wogglebug, Hank was bragging to Claire that when he became fully trained he could accompany her on her demon hunts.

“I’m not sure that would work, Hank,” said Claire attempting to ease the letdown. “There are two problems with you being alone with me. First, I don’t know when you haven’t kept up with your antidote and you might give in to your vampire nature and attack me. Also, you can mesmerize people and it will always bother me that I’m being manipulated whether or not you would actually do it. I know you wouldn’t mean to, but it still bothers me when I see your gray eyes. Can’t be helped.”

Hank frowned, but recovered from the letdown. “You know, I would make them blue again if I could.”

“Until they’re blue again, we can’t work together,” Claire insisted, and lifted Hank’s arms up again to steady for shooting at the target.

Professor Wogglebug thought a bit about their conversation and decided, ‘I can do something about that. Indeed I can!”

He turned back into the building to pass Jill and Andros, whose topic of conversation had changed drastically.

“So you’re gay,” Jill was saying. “That’s not anything to be embarrassed about. Sure, the Winchesters are cute. When you move into the office in Memphis you’ll be dealing with then a lot. Relish the experience!”

A blushing Andros had practically crawled under the table.

“It’ll be good to have you at the office,” Jill continued. “I’ll need you on hand when Dean gets flirty. That as per how my sister described him...”

“In fact,” Jill paused and looked off into the distance in thought. “In fact, you’re coming with Dean, Sam and me to Denver tonight.”

Now Andros was looking back in horror, his eyes barely above the table.

‘I’ve got to keep tabs on these two,’ thought Wogglebug. He glanced over towards the dining room where an amused Monica had heard the same conversation.

“I’m going outside to the OZ sigil to get a call home,” Wogglebug told Monica. “You run quite a house of intrigue here. That’s why I love to visit.” He pulled on his stylish overcoat and walked out front into the snow and to the far end of the building to the overlapping O-Z mark once drawn by Anica. He made a gesture meant for Glinda’s ballroom attendant and waited.

“Hank’s eyes were blue,” Wogglebug mused. And disappeared.

Castiel appeared early that evening, responding to a phone call from agent Jill Collins. He waited patiently as she rounded up Dean and Sam.

“Come on guys!” she shouted out the back door. “It’s time to go! I have the hotel reservations made.”

Dean and Sam sauntered in and lined up beside Castiel and Jill.

“Andros is coming with us,” Jill announced, dragging the petrified man into the line. “He’ll dig up the company records the FBI will need to track the human smugglers.”

Castiel looked over the foursome and with a thought they were standing outside a hotel a mere block away from the Carpathia Transport building.

Then he teleported himself to Eddie’s new barn below the Flathead Ridge near Kalispell, Montana. First to scope out the landscape there, then a cross-dimensional trip to Pedsh.


	23. Chapter 23

The Tomesku’s car passed quickly through Budapest and out onto the grasslands between there and their destination, Cluj. Vladimir had moved into the front seat to act as navigator. He studied the map he held and announced the road number and the first letter of the next town on the route. It was beyond his grasp to understand the Magyar spellings. Viktor, still unable to escape his dragon form, stretched his scaly body out along the back seat and slept.

“It’s all flat and grassy, like Kansas,” noted Vladimir, as the car passed herds of sheep in large pastures. Patches of snow along the fences reminded him that the weather here in November was like Kansas, too. “Hey, Viktor wake up! Cowboys!”

A pair of golden eyes between two sets of claws popped up at the back window in time for Viktor to see men in black broad-rimmed hats and colorful flared pants on horseback racing in the distance.

“Momma! Are those guys wearing dresses?” asked Vladimir.

“They’re just very baggy trousers,” replied Anica, “We’re on the Great Hungarian Plain. It will be like this all the way to Romania.”

On a fairly desolate stretch of the road, Anica could swear she felt the ground shake. Vladimir was looking at her with wide eyes and smoke puffed from a startled Viktor in the back seat. They all had felt it.

They felt it again as the road buckled in the distance ahead. Then again as the road behind them did the same. Anica slammed on the brakes in front of a tall leather-garbed woman standing in the road directly in front of them. The brown grass along the road broke into flames as Hannah walked up to the car.

“You have my dragon,” she announced. “Turn it over to me...NOW!”

Hannah pointed her pike at the car and parts of the car body began to crack and curl away from the frame. Anica sensed the intensity as Hannah approached her side of the car and looked in.

“Save yourselves. Turn it over!” Hannah said quietly. She pointed the tip of the pike at Anica, who remained motionless.

“Get out Viktor!,” Vladimir shouted from the other side. He slipped out of the car and pulled open the back door. Then he pulled on Viktor. “Fly away Viktor! Get out now and fly away!”

Viktor was frozen in fear at first, but as Vladimir got him partway out of the car, he regain his composure. He waddled awkwardly away from the car and spread his wings. Soon he was airborne, struggling to pick up both speed and altitude.

Hannah was not unaware of Viktor’s attempt to escape. She flung up her left hand and two iron chains flew out of it and stretched out towards the dragon. The ends looped around Viktor’s head, forming a chained bridle of sorts, holding him in mid-flight.

Viktor struggled. Hannah reeled him in as one would a kite in a windstorm. Viktor was being pulled closer and closer.

Vladimir and Anica watched helplessly from beside the car. They had no power over the witch. But they noticed immediately beside them the young woman in her red military uniform, the stick with which she was making a stirring motion, and the cauldron in which the other end of the stick swirled about.

Not far from the soldier was another one, and beyond her yet another. Anica and Vladimir looked around to see an entire large circle of them enclosing the fiery barren. Glinda was now about to personally enter the fray.

The metal soldier Captain Fyter suddenly appeared between them and Hannah. With a sabre extending from each arm, he marched determinedly up to the witch.

“Let the boy go, or be destroyed,” the soldier demanded.

Hannah scoffed. The flames around her grew and engulfed the captain. But when they died back, he stood unscathed.

“Ah, people always misunderstand. My body is not metallic, it is magical!” Captain Fyter charged and with one sword neatly sliced off Hannah’s left arm that held the chain leash.

Viktor immediately flew, witch’s arm in tow, up and out and beyond the cauldrons. Viktor hurried after him.

Hannah only became more defiant. Metal strands of iron quickly grew out from the stub of her arm and began growing into a network of pseudo-muscle and bone. The draft from the flames blew her skirt aside to reveal that her left leg above the boot had repaired itself into a moveable metallic leg–or rather, as with Captain Fyter, a magical leg of iron.

The captain glanced up at the sky to one side and noted the orangish-red glow growing. There was a rumble of thunder and flashes of light. This was what he had been delaying the witch for. The man of metal stepped back to leave plenty of room around the gloating Hannah.

The sky grew into a massive swirl of black smoke, except where the fiery glow grew. The sparks grew into strokes of lightning that caused horrendous thunder with each strike to the ground. Viktor and Vladimir re-entered the circle to join Anica and they watched in awe.

A monstrous nose poked out of the fire and the a pair of golden eyes with slitted pupils. The red-scaled creature was huge and filled most of the sky as it raised up. Then it dipped earthward like a red-sequined locomotive suddenly plummeting to the ground.

The creature’s great mouth swooped down and around Hannah. The dragon rolled over, turned back from where it came, and disappeared with a sweep of its tail.

Hannah the witch was gone.

Captain Fyter paused a moment and glanced around before finally announcing, “Well, that is that! Let’s clear out.”

The soldiers with their cauldrons disappeared one by one.

And Captain Fyter turned to the travelers and said, “Have a pleasant trip to Cluj! I’ll see you again at Eddie’s,” before the captain, too, disappeared from view.

Viktor was a little boy again. He pulled his human head out of the muzzle and reeled in the chain until the human arm at the other end reached him. He and Vladimir looked at each other with scrunched up noses. “Ewwwwwww!” And a moment later, “ Cool!”

Anica popped open the trunk and rummaged for a pair of pants and a shirt. After the ordeal, Viktor was left without a stitch of clothing. He wasn’t embarrassed, but Anica imagined that the next passer-by might question her parenting skills if she didn’t get him covered with something.

She took the arm and attached chain from the inquisitive boys and wrapped them in a piece of tarp, then packed it in the ice chest. No telling what she might do with it. But, Professor Wogglebug might surely find a purpose for it.

The car body was scorched, dented, and twisted in places , but inside it was still functional. Anica imagined to herself how the rental dealers would react when they returned to Vienna, She shrugged her shoulders and the trio climbed into the car. Anica drove it carefully back and forth among the patches of dying flames and around the raised section of the road ahead. She decided she was too excited to settled down in a hotel, so she would simply keep on driving to their destination.

On to Cluj!

It was sleeting in Denver as Jill, Andros, and the Winchesters stood before the hotel at which Castiel left them. The Carpathia Transport was in sight. Their plans were to spend the night in rooms that Jill had reserved at the hotel with FBI funds, and invade the vampire-run business early in the morning.

Jill entered first, and retrieved the room keys from the front counter and tossed one set to Dean. You guys get one, I’ll be in the connected room. Take good care of Andros. You don’t want to get bitten in the neck in your sleep.”

“I wouldn’t ever....,” Andros sputtered.

Sam’s snickering assured him the Winchesters regarded it as the joke is was and Andros relaxed.

As Jill unlocked her hotel door, Dean thought to ask, “Hey, you’d said not to bring anything but the weapons. How’re we going to shave and that kind of stuff?”

“The FBI had them delivered, of course!” Jill replied. “At their expense. They know how to support their agents.”

The guys let themselves into their room and the Winchesters tossed their gear onto each of the only two beds in the room. Andros noted the number of beds, but went into the bathroom to get ready for sleep. The brothers heard him rattling off the supplies left for them there, “Toothpaste, socks, boxer shorts, slippers, bathrobes, pajamas...”

“Pajamas?” Said Sam. Dean just shook his head.

“And, get this!” Andros continued. “We’re supposed to put our clothes in the box here and set it outside the door. They’ll be there cleaned and folded by 5 a.m.”

Dean was browsing through the small fridge. “Whoa! Coors! Now, that’s classy!” He tossed a can to Sam.

When Andros finally finished, he came out of the bathroom, freshly showered and teeth brushed, in his pajamas, and carrying the laundry box. Dean and Sam flung clothes in his general direction. Andros gathered them up.

Sam settled onto his bed in his boxers with his laptop. “Leave the box by the door and I’ll set it out after my shower.”

Not Dean. He marched towards the bathroom buck naked, pausing a moment in front of the red-faced vampire. “Really, Andy? Pajamas? Take them off. How old are you anyway?” Andros’ eyes were locked onto Dean’s butt all the way into the bathroom.

Andros was relieved that Sam hadn’t notice him ogling his brother. He was engrossed in whatever was on the laptop. The weapons were stashed away, but it was evident that Dean was clearly using the other bed. Andros settled down on the floor between the beds and looked for something on his phone to keep his mind off of his highly excited state.

Dean came out of the bathroom wearing fresh boxers, grabbed another beer out of the cooler, and plopped down on his bed. “Andy, still in the PJs?”

Andros looked up shrugged his shoulders and smiled slightly.

Sam took his turn in the bathroom, came out shortly in fresh boxers and tossed the others into the box. He latched the lid and pushed the box outside the door and settled down in bed to sleep.

Dean had to pee and brushed past Andros on his way to the bathroom.

But on his way back, he stopped over Andros, picked him up bodily and dropped him onto the near side of his own bed.

“Time to close up shop, Andy,” Dean said pointing at Andros’ smartphone. “We’ll be getting up early in the morning.

The Winchesters were soon both snoring away. Andros was still wide awake for about an hour, laying stiffly and unmoving.

That ended when Dean rolled over and flung his arm around Andros like he was some kid’s stuffed animal. Andros could feel Dean’s hair in his face and smelled a minty-beer scent.

What had Jill said about this? ‘Relish the experience.’ So he let himself calm down and drifted into a peaceful sleep under the secure arm of THE Dean Winchester.


	24. Chapter 24

Castiel peered into the Timms barn outside of Kalispell. He entered the guest quarters and walked the hall to the barn interior.

Eddie had commissioned its construction to replace the “ghost-cat lady’s” home and it was finished to Eddie’s specs. Eddie had been here. The color of the Jeep is this barn was green. Clearly it was for summer travel because, on the other side of the usual two doors in the floor, stood a Dodge Ram truck with a snow-blade. The far end of the barn had its cat-friendly room with cat-doors on the side. Castiel began placing sigils to protect the ghost cats from predators wanting to follow them in.

In fact, two of the ghost cats entered the barn as he placed the spells in and around the barn. He asked how things were and got the sense of a major calamity among the people of Pedsh in the other dimension. Not his concern. They also claimed ignorance about another dimension-crossing being besides them, the bigfoots, and the now-destroyed shape-shifters.

Confident all was well here, Castiel made a quick jump to the crevasse in the mountain behind the barn to assure that it was still sealed. It was.

Next, on to the other dimension. Castiel popped into the science laboratory there where the link to Earth originated. The dimension-jumping animals were no longer there. The scientists were no longer there. In fact, nobody was in the laboratory...anywhere.

He walked out of the building and onto the streets of Pedsh. Here, too, was no sign of people. Only a few animals, most appearing to be mangy former pets. The vehicles sat motionless. The shop windows were all dark. Belongings lay about: a hat, an umbrella, electronic devices, and shopping bags. But there was no sign of destruction, no damaged buildings or roads. Wherever the people went, they did not leave by coercion. It seemed that they were just suddenly not there anymore.

Anica, Vladimir and Viktor were finally in Romania. Viktor was now able to return to his human form after the ordeal with the witch Hannah. The boys stared in awe at the mountains lining either side of highway 1 into the city of Cluj. The highway led them into the center of the city and looped around an ancient gothic-style church.

“This is St. Matthew’s Church, the oldest church in Cluj. It is Roman Catholic now, but it wasn’t when your papa was interred the first time,” said Anica. She steered the car into the cathedral’s parking lot.

The boys wanted dearly to explore the huge sanctuary, but obediently tagged behind Anica to the secretary’s office. They were between services, so the woman at the desk granted them permission to walk in and look at the decor if they were considerate. The excited twosome turned to go out of the room.

“Remember,” Anica started to warn them.

“We know. No running, no shouting, and no claws.” Off they went.

“Nette Kinder. So schade über ihrem Vater,” consoled the secretary.

“Danke.”

“Hier sind die Schlüssel zum Tomesku Mausoleum. Werden Sie beerdigt dort auch werden?”

Anica accepted the mausoleum keys handed to her. “Danke. Und, nein, ich werde in Amerika begraben.”

The secretary raised a finger. “Oh. Wenn so, als die alleinigen Erben sollten Sie die Schlüssel behalten. Wir werden sie nicht brauchen, wenn es nicht mehr Begräbnisse geben wird.”

“What’d she say?” inquired Vladimir. People were in the sanctuary to pray and the boys came right back.

“She said,’sorry for your papa’s death, “Anica replied. “She wondered if I would be buried there, too and I said no, it would be in America. So, we get to keep the keys. And one of these is the key to Papa’s vault.”

She handed the keys over to Vladimir and he proudly clutched them in a tight fist, only loosening it for Viktor who wanted to see them.

The mausoleum was in the Hasengarten–the central cemetery. And it was only four blocks from St. Michael’s, so the trio opted to leave the car where it was, and walk there.

The boys were way ahead of Anica the moment they spied the huge metal gates at the end of the street. They looked in awe down each walled walkway that criss-crossed each other and surrounded huge monuments and greenery. Like walking through a colossal towering garden.

They were in the Catholic sector of the cemetery, Anica explained to them. Forward and to the left would be the Univeralists, they were headed to the Lutheran sector. St. Michael’s had changed Christian denominations over the centuries, although it started as Catholic and finally returned to a Catholic congregation. Vladimir pointed out the hammer-and-sickles they passed in the interior. Those were the atheists, Anica said.

Finally, deep into the cemetery, they turned into a long, slightly winding walkway. Anica noted that the Tomesku mausoleum would be at the end of this walkway. Not for long they followed a curve and there stood the solemn-looking tomb.

“Oh, dear,” sighed Anica. “The circus came. Did you boys bring your slingshots?”

Vladimir and Viktor pulled the slings out of their back pockets and proudly displayed them in already-transformed clawed hands.

“Good. The Demon Hunters Society is here to greet us. Gather up broken cobblestones on our way. We may need to shoot at someone.” Anica poised herself as much as she could into a formidable stature as she walked up to the tallest of the five individuals at the mausoleum.

Anica had notice she and the boys had crossed a line of salt. But, once with the hunters, she noted the sole female of the group lean down with a torch to set the line on fire. The flaming line formed a circle around all eight people and the mausoleum.

“Salt and holy water both, Simon? Isn’t that overkill?” announced Anica to the tallest of the hunters. “We are not affected by either one. You’re still the dunce I remember.”

Simon replied smugly. “Guten Morgen, Anica. Wir gelingen zu wissen, dass Sie einen Engel genannt Castiel zu Ihren Diensten haben.”

“English, Simon. I know you can do it.” Anica intended to set the rules in this game.

Simon laid the crossbow in his left hand back over his shoulder. “Very well. Vern and Veronika foresaw that you had arrived in Vienna by the aid of an angel named Castiel. If he comes here we shall be prepared.”

Anica looked over the other nodding compatriots of Simon. The woman wore over her slight body a black bodysuit, with a sword sticking up from a quiver slung over her back. Her hair was cropped short and she seemed to be the excitable type, ready to pounce at any moment. The three men were young and brutish-looking. Each held a dagger, all they seemed to feel they needed to confront a vampire with.

“Castiel won’t be here. We won’t need him,” said Anica.

Vladimir and Viktor stood at the ready with fists full of cobblestone bits and one in their slings aimed at the hunters. “I got the big-mouth one,” Vladimir said quietly to Viktor. “You hit anyone that lifts their weapon.”

Viktor nodded solemnly. The hunters around Simon frozen in place, unsure about what the boys were capable of.

“So that is your boy. I see he has been changed. I see we have two vampires to rid this country of. Who is the other one? His eyes aren’t gray.” Simon asked.

“Did you come prepared to fight fire?” responded Anica.

To emphasize Anica’s point, Viktor let his eyes revert to their dragon form and emitted puffs of smoke and sparks of fire in their direction.

Anica’s cell phone rang. She ignored the hunters and answered it. “Eddie! How are you feeling now? Good. Yes, we took care of Hannah. Glinda ate her. And we have her arm on ice in the cooler in the car trunk.”

She turned aside and continued. “Say, Eddie, remember me talking about the Vienna Demon Hunters Society? Guess who is here at the mausoleum causing trouble. Right! Any suggestions? Sure. I can do that.”

Anica raised her writing hand and the nail of its index finger grew. She turned to the mausoleum and with the nail, etched the letter ‘O.’ Then she crossed it three times forming the letter ‘Z.’

“Done! You’re a doll, Eddie. Tell Glinda I hope Hannah didn’t upset her stomach too much.”

Anica turned to Simon. “That was Eddie. Did your speak-in-tongues duo Vern and Veronica foresee him? Funny, because Eddie can speak in tongues and talk to spirit guides, too. Only he doesn’t have to have a second person to translate. In fact he simply talks directly to his spirit in Heaven and just came back from visiting there in person. If he were here, he could just touch the ground and turn all five of you into statues of salt.”

“Or gummy bears!” added Vladimir.

“Yeah! Gummy bears!” mimicked Viktor.

“He can do that?” A concerned Anica whispered to the boys, who nodded enthusiastically. “I’ll need to talk to him about that. You two eat too much sugar as it is.”

Returning to the hunters, Anica said. “But Eddie isn’t coming either.”

“Then who?” asked an embarrassed Simon. By now he had deduced that his group was sorely out of its league.

“Nobody is coming. We are going.”

With that Anica, Vladimir and Viktor disappeared.

Somewhere in the parking lot by St. Matthew’s cathedral a badly-dinged rental car also disappeared.

The hunters prepared to leave to lick their wounds at the headquarters. Two of them stomped out the flames encircling the mausoleum.

But in the midst of their preparations, two women in bold red, skirted military uniforms appeared at the mausoleum and pulled open the door. They turned to face the hunters, holding up long, slender and pointed rods in front of themselves. Inside could be heard Anica and the boys talking.

Simon apparently hadn’t learned from his immediate experience with Anica. He mocked the two young women. “Wha..! Mere girls threatening us with knitting needles! What can you do against our weapons?”

One woman demonstrated. She ran a finger of her left hand along the rod held in her right. It emitted a hum that changed in tone as her finger moved. Then she dipped the upheld rod down in Simon’s direction.

The cross-bow he held suddenly broke into pieces that dropped to the ground, much to Simon’s shock. And to the surprise of the others.

The other soldier remained in position, weapon pointed upward. “She modified her weapon not to harm you. Mine, however is at full power and I am not inclined to hesitate in turning all five of you at once into bloody chunks of meat for the vultures to feast on.”

The hunters remained motionless, as Anica and Vladimir completed their impromptu service for his father.

“I love you papa.”

Vladimir stepped out the door far enough to jiggle the mausoleum keys in his hand to show them they were finished. He pulled the door shut.

The soldiers disappeared. So, too, it can be assumed, did Anica, Vladimir, and Viktor from inside the structure.

Now safe, the hunters turned to head towards the cemetery entrance.

“So, the one boy breathes flames?” the woman inquired.

“Who were the women in red?” asked another member of the troupe.

“What kind of man-eating animal is Glinda?”

“And why didn’t we know about this wizard Eddie?” Added still another.

Simon stomped on ahead in anger. “Vern and Veronika have some serious explaining to do.”


	25. Chapter 25

Eddie Timms, Dorothy Gale and Captain Fyter were outside of the Eddies’ barn, standing around Hannah’s lead boot.

“Eddie, didn’t you say Hannah severed her leg to get away?” Captain Fyter was asking. “This boot is empty. Where is her leg?”

“Then Hannah wasn’t completely destroyed when Glinda arrived in her dragon form and ate her. A part of her was here. She got away,” worried Dorothy.

“When Anica returns, we will check the trunk for the arm,” said Eddie. “I wonder if it will be gone, too. If so, Hannah escaped and have parts of her physical self to rebuild from.”

They were walking over to Anica’s rental car when Anica, Vladimir, and Viktor popped into view.

“We need to see in the trunk,” Eddie announced immediately.

Vladimir fumbled through his keys, dismissed the mausoleum keys and found the trunk key for the car. He walked over to the trunk to open it and pull the ice cooler to the front.

A turn of the trunk key and a lift of the cooler lid, Vladimir pulled out the chain with no arm attached to it.

“It’s gone!” Declared Vladimir and Viktor together.

“Hannah is still alive,” confirmed Dorothy. “She will return. I knew it. When Castiel told me the other witch was Rose, I knew the wicked witches found a way back to life!”

She turned to Captain Fyter. “Beau, I don’t know if Hannah and Rose realize who they are, but if they ever remember, Oz is in for dire times.”

“Dorothy?” Eddie asked. “You mentioned Castiel. Where is he?”

“Well, I told him that witches go where goblins go and he decided to find out. Somewhere in our conversation he decided that they if disappear into another dimension they might be in a place called Pedsh. Where is Pedsh?”

“Where the ghost cats go,” Eddie mused as he looked over the dents in Anica’s rental car. “He went to my place in Montana before making a jump into the dimension where the city of Pedsh is.”

He took the chain from Vladimir and Viktor and caused it to turn into silver. Then he handed it over to Anica, saying, “Here. Tell your rental car place in Vienna that you will just purchase the car. This should cover the cost.”

On his way out of Pedsh, Castiel discovered his first living being. Two men were riding an open wagon being towed by oxen-like creatures. A white powdered substance was piled in the back.

When their paths crossed, Castiel asked the two men where they were going.

“To the quarry,” said one of them. “We have lime to shovel in, and then home.”

“Who are you and where are you headed?” asked the other.

“I am Castiel. I am trying to learn where the residents of Pedsh are now. There is nobody there.”

“Ah,” replied the driver. “I am Dendegrezzal and this is Gragestorneeth. Where are you from that you do not know what happened to the people of Pedsh?”

“I have just arrived from a distant place.” Castiel wondered what it was he had missed in the city.

The two glanced at each other with puzzled expressions and the driver continued. “It is happening everywhere. Where could you be from that you don’t know that...”

The other man nudged the driver and spoke. “If you come with us to help shovel out this lime, we will show you where the people of Pedsh are now.”

The driver was about to speak again, but glanced again at the other man. “Yes. It would be better for you to come with us and you will see. On the way, you can tell us where you came from.”

Castiel climbed aboard the wagon.

The driver called, “kakakah,” to the oxen and the wagon rolled on for a short distance before they turned off of the paved road and onto a rough dirt lane. “Leaving the land of the advanced culture and into the realm of our country culture. The quarry is up ahead.”

“So tell us, said ‘Grage,’ “Where are you from.”

“Kansas,” said Castiel.

“Ah. Never heard of it. In what country?”

“America,” replied Castiel.

“Ahhhh. Nope! Never head of it either. It must be a small country.”

“We think it is a large country,” said Castiel.

“We all think we are of large country in one way or the other,” chortled the driver Dende.”

The wagon rolled on for more than an hour. Finally they came upon a gathering of wagons at a cliff’s edge. The other wagons were loaded with dirt or gravel. Castiel could see the opposite wall of the quarry from his spot in the wagon.

“We will have to wait our turn,” said Dende as he pulled over the wagon to park it among the others. “Come with us to the edge to see the citizens of Pedsh.”

Dende and Grage marched to the quarry’s edge with Castiel in tow. There the angel learned why the city was empty of people. Nearby a road wound down into the quarry to a point where all was level. From that point, gravel lanes on the top of brick-lined walls branched off in all directions forming barriers around pits in the level surface. Each pit was either filled to various levels with dirt, or with dead bodies. And the eyes of every body were sunken in as if burned.

Castiel looked abruptly at the men. “What caused their deaths?”

Dende said, “God’s retribution on those of us seeking to become gods themselves. It started in Pedsh, but it quickly spread into all of the cities of the world. Every individual who turned from God to faith in their anti-God leaders died by their own advanced devices.”

Grage continued. “They tried to break into God’s realm in the scientific research center in Pedsh. They tried to copy animals who could cross into God’s realm and made their own creatures but failed to cross over themselves. Finally, an angry God crossed into the realm of people in the laboratory there and killed everyone, and everyone watching on their social devices, and everyone across the world who also saw the face of God on their devices.’

That left only we who live simple lives in respect for the authority of God. We have no such devices, we do not believe our scientists should tamper with that which is unseen. Now it is up to us to bury the people of the strayed societies who defied God, and to raise their surviving children in our simple ways approved by God.”

When it was their turn, Dende, Grage, and Castiel rode in on their wagon of lime and to one of the pits of human bodies. They climbed out of the wagon and looked over the mass. Dende handed a shovel to Castiel and the trio went to work shoveling lime over the bodies.

“This will slow the decay. Otherwise the men bringing the next batch of bodies would pass out from the stench. When the bodies are stacked close enough to the level of the lane, dirt is thrown out instead. Then bricklayers come in and raise the lanes, and we start all over again. Someday the quarry will be filled to the top, and when their children die, they will probably be buried at the surface above their ancestors.”

Castiel paused to look around in the quarry. Sure enough, dirt was being thrown in some of the pits. And where the pits were full to the top with dirt, masons were either adding bricks to the walls around the pits or other men were shoveling gravel between the walls to raise the lane higher.

The lime wagon was empty and Dende removed the feed bags from the oxen in preparation to head home. “Castiel, would you like to come with us? I’m sure the family would be happy to meet a foreigner. Stasi would love to learn about your country America.”

Castiel thanked him and agreed to go with them. He had nowhere else to go and still needed to find out about the goblins.

The meal at Dendegrezzal’s homestead was delicious. Castiel had no idea what animals were the source of the protein and could not match the vegetables with any he had seen on Earth, but he enjoyed them regardless. He thanked them for their hospitality.

“God expects us to feed the travelers,” said Dende’s wife. The two boys grabbed used dishes from the table and took them into the kitchen. One tall girl left and returned excitedly with a large book stuffed with scraps of paper. It was a world atlas.

“Castiel, this is Stasi,” said Dende.

Stasi held out her hand to Castiel saying, “I am honored to meet you. May I talk with you privately in the garden?”

Castiel nodded and followed her into the garden where they settled down on chairs around a wooden table.

“I do not know about Kansas,” Stasi began. “But I know where America is. Montana is in America.”

Castiel raised one eyebrow. How would she know that?

“I worked at the lab where the catastrophe began,” she continued. “I saw you that day with three others, a white-haired man and two dark-haired boys.”

Stasi held up one hand and wiggled her six fingers. “You all had five fingers. Did you not notice the reactions of the people who saw you? Your eyes are small and your ears are large. That would have gained notice from the people.”

Castiel admitted that he hadn’t thought about that.

Stasi pulled out from the atlas, a hand-drawn map showing an ‘x’ in a rectangle identified as ‘Montana.’ Some towns were there, like Kalispell. Mountains were added, Some other states were identified, including Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri.

Then she laid on the table a printed image of a female and four males among the bigfoots in the laboratory’s animal room. The image was of her with Castiel, Eddie, Vladimir and Viktor on the day the deaths began.

“Castiel,” Stasi asked solemnly. “Did God send you?”


	26. Chapter 26

Bright and early in the morning, Andros was wakened by a knock on the hotel room door. He looked around the room. Dean had rolled back over to the other side of their bed and Sam was awake in the other bed, immersed in his laptop as he was the night before.

“Boys?” Jill called from the other side of the connecting door to her room. “Are you up? I’m going downstairs to feed off of the breakfast bar.”

“‘Kay,” Sam said. “We’ll join you in a little bit.”

Andros smiled to himself, remembering the night before. Then he worried a bit if he could stand up with the Winchesters in the raid to come. He extended his fingernails a bit. For a little guy he still had his vampire strength and his mesmerization power was good enough to put any non-vampire to sleep at a glance. He would try his best to make the brothers regard him as an equal.

Dean stirred. Then he sat up on his side of the bed saying, “I need a beer. Is there still some in the fridge?”

“Pancakes and coffee in the lobby,” piped up Sam. “Probably cereal, probably even your Captain Crunch if Jill had her say on the menu.”

Dean perked up and forgot about the beer. Out of bed and towards the bathroom, shedding his shorts on the way. “First dibs on the hot water!”

Andros’ eyes follow the man all the way around the corner and he sat up straight when Dean poked his head back around the corner to say, “Andy! Come on, get ready. It’s free food. We have bad guys to kill!”

Sam slammed shut his laptop. “You go next Andros. I’m going down now. I’ll clean up while you two eat.”

He pulled on jeans from the laundered clothes pile, and threw a tee-shirt over his shoulder on his way to the door.

Sam looked back to Andros before exiting. “You know, Dean had been a gloomy Gus since Castiel started spending less time with us. I think you might have become his Cas replacement. Don’t be surprised if he starts acting like your daddy. He seems to like you.”

Jill was working on a plate of bacon when Sam reached the lobby.

“Coffee’s fresh,” she announced.

Sam filled a cup and filled a plate. He sat across from Jill.

Jill brought up what Andros learned from the spellbook from the Black Widows clubhouse. “Andros says the deity that the Black Widows worshiped is associated with a mythological figure named Arachne. Not a god, but she gained supernatural powers when Athena turned her into a spider. Where would we find a Greek god-like creature?”

“I don’t think we’ve ever tracked a deity to a other-worldly home base. We have always found them on Earth,” said Sam. “But the spiders were being called from somewhere that we don’t know. There wasn’t a place on the property for her to be residing,”

“Wouldn’t Arachne be in Hades with the other Greek gods and goddesses?”

“I guess so. If it were Hell, Cas could investigate. I don’t think even he knows where Hades is. It wouldn’t be as easy as walking through one of Eddie’s portals.”

Jill thought for a moment. “Has anyone asked Eddie if he has a portal to Hades?”

Dean plopped a plate of bacon, eggs and hash browns on the table. Andros arrived not much later. They feasted, gathered their gear from their rooms and were soon on their way down the street to the Carpathia Transport building.

“That’s our truck,” said Jill as they reached the building. She pointed to a truck with a green stripe and the words ‘Frontier Bulk Imports’ down its side.

“F.B.I. Really?” groaned Sam.

“I didn’t name it,” Jill said in her defense. “It’s a valid subsidiary of a company that ships international freight for the government. What’s nice about these trucks is that you can drop the back seat in the cab and craw into the trailer. Notice that the trailer is docked, so we have an easy entry into the building.”

“So we stuff the dead vampire bodies into the trailer and some FBI agent will come and drive it away?” asked Dean.

“No. We’re going to drive it away. We’ll drop it off in Memphis, where an official cleaning crew will dispose of the bodies. Our ICE agents spent the night in our hotel, too. Once they see the truck is gone, they will raid the place and rescue the trafficked humans as each truck comes in.”

“Bum bum ba da bum bum ba da bum bum ba da bum bum,” Sam chanted the theme to ‘Mission Impossible’ to himself. This whole thing was so organized. He and Dean were used to playing everything by ear. This was going to be too anti-dramatic.

The foursome climbed into the cab, dropped the back seat and rolled into the trailer as planned. The gate to the trailer was up as planned. The dock was quiet as planned.

Three vampires stood on the dock looking quizzically into the trailer. Not as planned.

“Time to slay,” announced Dean and drew out his dagger. The vampires were offed in quick fashion and the bodies were dragged to the far end of the trailer.

Andros, being the company accountant, had the most valid reason to be here, so he ventured first across the dock. He muttered to himself–actually into a microphone on his jacket–about who was where along the halls and rooms he crossed through to the records room. He pressed his hand against where his dagger was tucked in his pants.

Jill, Dean and Sam could hear Andros through their ear pieces. Only Andros had a microphone and he had no ear piece. The other three could hear him but could not speak. It’s all they figured they would need.

The F.B.I. truck had been docked near the far end of the dock and doors at that end were locked. So that left only for them to walk as nonchalantly as they could along the dock and check for open doors. A couple of other trucks had been backed into place but the trailer gates had not yet been raised.

Through their ear pieces they heard Andros going,”Bum bum ba da bum bum.” Darn that TV show theme was infectious. Then he began describing his route, “Turning right down red hall. No activity. End of hall turn left towards records room. Past office. Oh, shit!”

Dean, Sam and Jill quickened their pace.

They heard a knocking and Andros speaking again. “Mr. Griswald. What are you doing here?”

“Andros,” said Griswald with some surprise in his voice. “What are YOU doing here. I was told you abandoned me.”

“No, no,” assured Andros. “I’m still with you. It’s auditing time. I’ve been slipping unannounced into our various facilities and checking the books. I’m on my way to the records room right now.”

Andros stayed put and tried to extend the conversation. “I don’t think I have ever seen you in one of the satellite sites, Mr. Griswald. Is there anything wrong here?”

“Some of our truck drivers haven’t been completing their routes,” groused Griswald. “And no one seems to be able to explain why.”

“Well I can probably pinpoint where the problem is when I audit the books,” confirmed Andros. “I’ll start right now. I’ll be in the records room.”

He walk carefully to the records room thinking to himself that he should have walked into the office and tried to kill Griswald. No, that would have been stupid. He was a weakling compared to the corporate owner. As an alpha vampire, Griswald was much stronger and much quicker. Andros decided to just stay in the records room until Dean, Sam or Jill came down the hall be their back-up.

As Sam and Dean hurried up the red hall, Jill noticed the laundry carts in an open janitor’s room. Perfect! She shoved one towards the bodies slain on the dock. Then a second one.

As she turned back to follow Sam and Dean, the woman’s washroom door opened and a gray-eyed woman stepped out, surprised to see blue-eyed Jill with the carnage behind her. The woman opened her mouth to shout for help and got a dagger shoved through her larynx.

But a stab in the throat doesn’t kill a vampire, so Jill pulled out the dagger and slashed it across one side of the woman’s neck, leaving her to lash about on the floor.

“Die, dammit!,” hiss Jill. She rolled the woman over and stepped on her back. A slash across the back of the neck finally severed the head altogether and it dropped to the floor.

Jill wiped her dagger on the vampire’s uniform and checked both lavatories for occupants. Nobody else there. She by-passed the red hall and went on to find any unlocked doors further down the dock.

Sam and Dean were at the end of the red hall. Sam pulled out his dagger. Dean chose to use his kill-all weapon, his Colt 45. Dealing with Griswald called for it.

The brothers stooped down to rush around the corner, then rose to enter the office where a surprised Christopher Griswald stood up from his seat behind the desk. An eye-blink later he was standing in front of the desk, glaring at them as they pushed through the doorway.


	27. Chapter 27

From the records room down the hall, Andros heard the Winchesters enter the office where Eric Griswald was. He did not know if he would help or hinder Dean and Sam, but grabbed one of the records books and headed in that direction anyway.

What he glimpsed through the office window as he approached the door was the backs of Dean and Sam in different parts of the room facing Eric Griswald who stood at the front of the office desk. At first, Dean had his Colt 45 pointed at Griswald, but he began drawing it back and pointing it at his own head.

Andros had to do something quick. Anything.

He pushed through the office door and approached Griswald with his records book open.

“Boss! Here it is. I found out what’s been happening!” He held up the records book.

“What are you babbling about?”

“The people responsible for the lost trucks and the slayings in our buildings! Look!”

The book was practically in Griswald’s face now.

Griswald was incensed. “The pages are blank, you idiot! What are you trying to say?”

Dean and Sam still stood in their positions. Griswald was not being distracted. Andros had to think of something else.

He dropped the book down on the desk and looked back at the Winchesters.

Andros continued in a more reserved voice, “Why are these guys here?”

“Do you know them?” asked Griswald.

“Yes. Their names are Sam and Dean. They slay vampires.”

“Well, they are about to be dead vampire slayers.”

“They deserve worse than what you’re about to do,” asserted Andros. “Something more devious.” He stepped between Eric Griswald and Dean Winchester and look Dean in the eyes.

Andros said to Dean, “Look at me. Remember your original aim. Point the gun at Sam and fire.”  
Griswald grinned. Okay, this could be good.

Sam came out of his trance just in time to see his brother with the Colt pointed at him. He heard the ‘bang’ and saw a flicker. There was a warm sensation. And then he saw Griswald wobble and drop to the floor. The bullet had swerved away from him and burrowed straight through the vampire.

Sam threw up his hands. “You shot at me!”

He looked down. “And I wet my pants!”

Not to let the issue go, Sam looked back up at Dean at shouted, “You shot at me!”

“But I didn’t aim at you,” retorted Dean. “The bullet didn’t even come close. Besides, Andy told me to. Didn’t you Andy?” He looked back towards Andros for support.

“I was my fault, Sam,” Andros offered. “I had to make Mr. Griswald think I was on his side and that he was safe from Dean’s gun.”

Dean hugged Andros with one arm. “That was great, Andy! Real devious of you.”

They headed out of the office with a still-angry Sam stomping behind them. “But you SHOT AT ME!”

Once back in the red hall, they heard a blood-curdling scream and a gasping sound. Jill! They hurried down the hall and out into the dock room. They followed the sound of the commotion going on down one of the other halls.

They entered the hall and looked over streams of blood splattered over the floors. Then a headless body dropped out into the hallway from one of the rooms. Jill stepped out of the same room with hair mussed and blood splotches on her outfit.

“Where have you guys been? “ she shouted. “There’s a whole residential area back here!”

Jill calmed down and stretched her sore arms, walking towards the men. “I think that’s it. There are a couple of human victims among them. I think they had just finished feeding. There are laundry carts on the dock in which we can gather up the bodies.”

“Uh, we got the big boss,” said Dean meekly as she marched past them.

“Good for you.” Jill smiled back at him. “I had guessed you hadn’t stopped for a potty break.”

She glanced at Sam’s pants. “I see Sam should have. I’ll get the carts.”

“Dean shot at me!” Sam whined as he followed her onto the dock area. “I saw the bullet come right at me!”

Jill patted him on the back to console him. “You wanna go stand in front of a warm air dryer while the rest of us start cleaning up?”

Near Pedsh in another dimension, Castiel answered Stasi’s question. “No, God did not send me. I have a different mission. I am searching for goblins. Do you know what they are and do they come here?”

“Goblins?” Stasi replied. “No, I don’t know what they are.”

Castiel explained, “they are small green creatures with long pointed ears that snatch children in the middle of the night and then disappear with them.”

There was recognition in Stasi’s eyes. “Child snatchers. The have been known to appear suddenly and stuff a child into a bag and disappear. The child is never seen again. Is that what you mean?”

“Exactly. But if children are being snatched here, then this is not where they go with the children. Do you know where they go afterwards?”

“Nobody knows,” said Stasi, “otherwise we would find the children.”

“Of course.” Castiel bid Stasi farewell and then thanked her family for their hospitality. Once out of sight, he vanished, having gotten no closer to his goal.

Castiel appeared where he could ponder best, by his bee hives. It was winter now and the bees would need to be guarded against the cold wind. A shelter had already been built around the hives. Castiel held out his hand and a few bees came out to brush against it.

“What’re you doing, Castiel?” Vladimir’s head popped out from around the corner of the barn. Of course, so did Viktor’s. And Castiel’s cat Cassandra’s head.

“Healing the bees that the winter weather has harmed,” replied Castiel. Soon his closed up shop and tagged along with the boys headed back to the other end of the barn.

In spite of the cold temperature, Vladimir and Viktor were dressed lightly. They had been playing basketball under the gaze of the dapper Professor Wogglebug. This was lesson day and they took the learning pills he brought. The game was being played to ramp up the energy to make the pills work.

“Castiel,” the professor announced with great flair. “How was your trip? Did you find the destination of our goblins?”

“Unfortunately, no,” sighed Castiel. “I turns out the other dimension has the same problem as we do with children being carried off by the same creatures.”

Eddie joined them, carrying a pink rose, a cork, and a brown bottle with his thumb over the open top. He held the bottle upside down so that the liquid inside washed down to his thumb, righted the bottled and rubbed his thumb and a finger together.

“I don’t know what this stuff is,” he complained. “The bottle was outside the front door of the house with this rose. It smells like alcohol. I tried to change the liquid into a different substance but it wouldn’t change. How could that be?”

“Magic?” guessed Wogglebug. He pulled out a handkerchief and poured a bit of the liquid onto it. A bristly finger hovered over the drop and the drop seemed to raise up a bit toward his finger.

Wogglebug straightened up in amazement. “Yes, there’s a magical aspect to it. I hope you didn’t drink it.”

“No. I only tried to identify it,” replied Eddie.

“Let me take this back to my lab, then,” said Wogglebug. Eddie consented.

Castiel’s phone rang and he put it to his ear. “Yeah. Okay.” And then he hung it up.

He glanced around at the inquiring faces around him. “Uh. That was Dean. He and Sam are in Memphis and he will call me when they are ready for me to move them to the bunker. I should go. I am taking Cassandra with me.”

He leaned down and reached for his cat, who jumped enthusiastically into his arms. They disappeared.

And they reappeared at Eddie’s barn in Kansas, a short distance from the Men of Letters bunker. Dean had an aversion to cats, although he tolerated Cassandra well enough. She would be left at the barn where she was familiar with the barn cats there.

Castiel walked around the barnyard carrying his pet and talking to her. As fond as he was of his humans, solitude at this usually uninhabited barn had an allure about it. This and his friends the bees he tended back in Indiana. But, too, the barn in the forest in Montana. Maybe he just liked barns.

As he walked, he noticed something sitting in front of the door to the residential section of the barn. A pink rose. And a corked brown bottle. Just like Eddie had with him back in Indiana.

Castiel put down Cassandra and picked up the bottle and rose. How odd. He didn’t bother to pop the cork. Why bother when the odds are great it had the same unidentifiable contents.

He appeared in the bunker, left the bottle and rose on the library table to ponder over later, and reappeared by the barn. He followed Cassandra back to the back of the barn where kittens were coming through the pet door. His cat trotted on ahead to investigate. 

The thought still followed him. Two identical bottles. Each with a rose. Both on Eddie’s properties. Although there was a chance this second one was intended for the Winchesters’ bunker but the sigils redirected the deliverer to the barn. What was the common thread here?


	28. Chapter 28

Jill drove the truck out of Denver with Sam in the front beside her and with Dean and Andros in back. Dean was grousing over the music playing over the radio. He finally leaned over the front seats to reach for the radio dial.

Jill smacked his arm. “Why aren’t you in your seat belt? Get back there. Besides, shotgun picks the tunes.”

Sam grinned and said, “Yeah and backseat shuts his cakehole.”

Dean sulked back in his corner of the back seat, with seatbelt buckled. “How did Jill get to drive the truck, anyway?”

“Cause I had the keys,” Jill retorted. “And Sam is in front because he’s my favorite.”

Sam stuck out his tongue at his brother and adjusted the radio to a station he knew would annoy Dean the most.

Our quartet of vampire slayers had ridden as far from Denver as Limon, Colorado before Sam wa able to contact Castiel by phone. He warned Jill to pull the truck over before Castiel teleported them. Sam and Dean appeared beside Dean’s Impala so they could go shopping. Jill, Andros and the truck appeared in Memphis where agents were present to dispose of the cargo.

“First the office on the left, then your apartment, then mine at the end of the hall. Across the hall is a couple of furnished apartments for guests. I’ll show you the office after we eat.” Jill motioned Andros to follow her past the office to the second door.

“Here’s your apartment,” Jill told Andros as she pushed open the door. “Settle in while I get the goulash started in my apartment.”

She turned and paused for a second, then called back to the vampire,” It IS okay to include garlic, right?”

From the doorway Andros rolled his eyes. “That’s fiction, Jill. I like garlic in my goulash.”

“Thought so.” Jill continued on to her apartment.

He looked over the furniture, bookshelves and a large computer monitor in the living room. To the right was the bedroom with a twin bed and dresser. To the left was the spacious kitchen with a table for dining. He trusted there was a bathroom in here somewhere.

Andros walked into his new home and dropped his armload of Carpathia Transport records onto the couch. He took up the top book and carried it to the kitchen table and opened it to study. He would need pencil and paper to organize the details. These records should tell him the location of each of Eric Griswald’s vampire residences. The number of victims delivered should tell him how many vampires were living in each place. The human trafficking sources should be in the records, too.

He looked around for paper and noticed there was no printer in the room. Ah, the printer and office supplies would be in the FBI office down the hall. He decided to check out the office now.

As Andros stepped out of his apartment he heard a loud commotion, sounding like all the pans in Jill’s kitchen had dropped on the floor and she was throwing them one after another across the room. Then he heard her shouting above the noise. It sounded like she was in a struggle with someone...or something.

Andros hurried towards Jill’s apartment and pushed through the partially opened door. Inside he saw that the livingroom was filled completely with one of Arachne’s giant spiders. Jill was cursing loudly at it from her kitchen and hitting it with everything she could get a hold of.

She was losing the battle. The monster spewed webbing at her and it was getting difficult for her to move around with the sticky substance building up around her legs and arms. Soon she was stuck to the livingroom wall and no struggling would get her free.

From the hallway Andros called out, “Υπέρτατη εξουσία σας κάτω από το χώμα επιστροφή στο άψε σβήσε φωλιά σας.”

The spider disappeared.

“It looks like Arachne has located you,” Andros announced. “Maybe she’s learned you snatched her spellbook. Good thing I memorized the right incantation to send it back. I’ll need to teach it to you, and a few other things. We still need to get the spellbook from the Vam San.”

Jill nodded in approval as she sighed to herself over the goulash slathered all over the floor. “Looks like we’re having take-out pizza.” She pried through the webbing to find her smartphone.

Sam and Dean entered the bunker with cardboard boxes of groceries. As Dean loaded beer into the fridge, Sam looked over Dean’s shoulder at the few items already in there.

“We should have taken Jill up on her offer on goulash,” he said to Dean. “It may be Hamburger Helper night here.”

Dean pulled hamburger out of the freezer and tossed it onto the counter to thaw. “She can cook? I’ll have to ask Andy how good the meal was. If he doesn’t get poisoned, maybe we can invite ourselves over sometime.”

“Yeah. I’m going to call Cas to see if he wants to eat with us,” said Sam.

“Good,” said Dean. “Hey! What’s this?” He picked up the corked bottled that Castiel had left on the table and looked it over. He popped the cork and sniffed the bottle. Alcohol. He took as swig. “Don’t know what it is but it’s not bad.” He drank some more.

Sam laid the skillet on the stove and walked over to the table. He picked up the rose and, with brows furrowed, held it up to Dean.

Dean shrugged his shoulders and drank some more. “Think Eddie might have left these?”

Sam walked over to his pencil box to check it. Back in the past when they would forget Eddie’s presence when Eddie performed his miracles, Eddie left an altered pencil for Sam to let him know something had happened outside his range of memory, so he could contact Eddie to find out what it was. Copper pencil, ruby pencil,... but no new ones. After a while when Eddie left a pencil, he began to leave a bottle of something for Dean, too, so he wouldn’t feel left out.

“I wondered if Wogglebug’s pills would wear off and we’d start forgetting what Eddie does. But there are no new pencils, so Eddie isn’t trying to communicate something,” Sam said.

Dean noted what Sam had said and walked away, bottle in hand, “I’m going to clean up while you call Cas.”

Sam nodded and pulled out his laptop. Before he called he wanted to check the monitor at Eddie’s Kansas barn to see if Castiel was there.

He pulled up the link and, sure enough, there onscreen was Castiel with kittens clinging to his trench coat. Castiel was just calmly standing there, but he was talking, probably to the kittens. Maybe to his cat Cassandra.

Sam smiled and decided to scan back through the video file. He scanned back to when Castiel discovered the bottle and rose and then disappeared. Okay, it was Castiel who had left them in the bunker.

As an afterthought, he scanned further back to see when the bottle appeared. When he found the frame, he froze. A scrawny green creature with pointed ears stood at the spot. It pulled the bottle and rose out of a bag it carried and placed them at the door to the barn apartment. It looked around and shortly it and the bag disappeared.

“Dean! Dean!” Sam called to his brother. “It’s a goblin! A goblin left the bottle! Dean!”

Sam dialed Castiel’s phone and told him to get to the bunker immediately. Someone had been looking for the bunker and was redirected by Castiel and Eddie’s sigils to the barn. And that someone had sent a goblin with an unusual gift.

In Indiana, Professor Wogglebug knocked on the door to Eddie Timms’ home. Vladimir let him in and led him to Eddie.

“What’s up, Professor?” Eddie asked.

“The contents of the corked bottle,” announced Wogglebug. “The solution is magic. It’s an elixir of youth.”

“It makes one youthful?” Eddie asked.

“No. I doesn’t make one youthful. I makes one a youth. That is, if you had drunk it, it would have turned you into a child. I’m not sure what would have happened if the boys drank it. Magic means witchcraft produced it, and most likely delivered it.”

Eddie looked back to the pink rose in the vase on the table. “The witch Rose?”

Back in Kansas, Sam and Castiel looked at each other in shock when a seven-year-old boy walked into the kitchen, pulling up on an oversize pair of boxer shorts he wore that Sam recognized as Dean’s.


	29. Chapter 29

Sitting at the bunker’s kitchen table, Sam sipped coffee from a cup and pushed a cup towards Dean. “Here you go.”

Castiel also sat at the table, drinking coffee. Although his angel’s grace fully provided for the human body he wore, he had come to notice over the years that there were still some subtle things that seemed to make it more...pliable to work with. One was drinking coffee. Another was watching his bees. He sat and observed the brothers working out their new situation.

The diminutive Dean, wearing a black AC/DC tee-shirt that hung to his knees, climbed up onto the counter to get to the cupboard. As he threw his seven-year-old leg up to do so, Sam noticed he had woven a cord through the waistband of his boxers, tied in front, in order to keep them up. Dean stood up and pulled a box of cereal out of the cupboard and crouched to get back down.

Instinctively Sam grabbed his brother by his waist and lowered him to the floor.

Dean spun around and gave Sam a nasty look and Sam stepped back with his hands up. “Sorry!”

Sam sat back watching as Dean got a bowl and poured milk into it. “Like having a son,” he whispered to Castiel.

Dean dumped cereal into the milk and proceeded to chow down with vigor.

Sam smirked and thought to himself, ‘Yeah, a small, bossy, foul-mouthed, womanizing, heavy-drinking son.’

Castiel broke Sam’s reverie. “Eddie says his boys can loan Dean some of their clothes. Whenever you are ready.”

The brothers nodded and finished breakfast.

At Eddie’s, Vladimir and Viktor took Dean’s new condition in stride.

“So can you still drive?” ask Vladimir

“I could if I sat at the edge of the seat. But Sammy hid the keys,” glowered Dean.

“Oh, good move,” Eddie assured Sam.

The three ‘boys’ headed to Vladimir and Viktor’s room to check on clothes for Dean.

Eddie continued, “I can see right now that little Dean will be swimming in the boys’ clothes. I didn’t realize he would be so small, but then, there’s about a five-year age difference.”

“Quick note,” interjected Sam. “Don’t call him little Dean in front of his face. Just saying.”

Castiel added a knowing nod.

“I suppose hugs are out, too,” Eddie said.

“I wouldn’t advise it,” said Castiel.

“Anyway, Scraps agreed to sew him some outfits. She would have to keep him overnight. The staff in Glinda’s palace should be able to handle him. And Scraps promised not to make anything that would make him look like a Munchkin. Strictly all-American boy patterns.”

It wasn’t long before Viktor came into the livingroom sobbing and wrapped himself around Eddie. “Daddy, all my shirts have holes in them,” he blustered.

“Of course they do,” Eddie told him. “Your wings have to push through. Did you tell him that he could tuck things back there like a backpack?”

Dean and Vladimir were in the doorway, expecting to be scolded.

“Did anything fit?” Eddie asked them.

“He’s too little,” said Vladimir.

Dean looked over at Vladimir like he had just stabbed him in the back.

“Well, you are,” Vladimir said in defense.

“Doesn’t matter,” Sam jumped in to calm hurt feelings. “Scraps is going to make Dean his own clothes. Eddie, when can she do it?”

“She’s in Glinda’s ballroom right now, so Castiel can pop him over there now if he wants and she will take it from there.”

Castiel glanced to Sam to be sure Sam was okay with that and suddenly Dean was standing amidst a crowd in Glinda’s mirrored ballroom.

“Deanie, you’re here!” shouted Scraps. She grabbed his arm and half-dragged him towards the hall in her enthusiasm. “To the royal fabric room!”

Dean looked about himself as they hurried along, at the people, many oddly dressed and many just odd themselves: a man with a huge flat-topped head, a woman made of china, a carving knife with a face, arms and legs...   
He’s so cute!” Dean heard from within the crowd as he slipped between the guests in the wake Scraps created.

‘Of course I am.’ thought Dean to himself.

Two royal guards kept pace behind them as Scraps and Dean headed down the hall and up the steps that would get them to the fabric room. The palace staff knew to expect the unexpected whenever Scraps came for a visit from the Emerald City.

On the way Scraps pulled items from her bag and attached them to the end of her fingers. Needles, and thimbles and cutting tools, to do what her cloth fingers could not. She twitched two blades together like scissors in front of Dean, startling him.

Dean followed Scraps into the fabric room. He stood just inside the room as Scraps marched to near the sewing table and froze. Just stood there.

Dean waited. Was he supposed to be doing something?

Suddenly Scraps threw her arms out and shouted, “Oooooooooooooooh!”

She raced to a bolt of tulle studded with tiny diamonds and pulled the material around herself, spinning furiously. Then she whirled to one side and back to the other with the veil spinning in layers of glittering light and haze. She leaped up onto one end of a long work table where she leaned her limber cloth body back so far that the tassles that served as hair dangled over the table and nearly to the floor. She began to sing, with arms swaying above her and marched in that way in a triumphant manner across the length of the table.

“Silk and lace, denim and tulle, what shall I do, eeeeeeeh! With nylon and cotton, rayon and wool I guess, to make pleated trousers and a doub’-breasted vest...”

“She’s nuts!” thought Dean as the creature paused at the end of the table.

Scraps leaped from the table and raced towards Dean. She grabbed black silk fabric from the bolt beside him and threw it around him. With a ‘snip’ the silk was cut from the whole and Dean and all were wrapped up in the whirling fabric headed towards the stacks of material towards the back of the room.

Dean was carried along with the manic Scraps across the tops of the rows of bolted cloth and then down between them, into piles of remnants and around islands of material. As they went, the fabric wrapped around them grew tighter. Dean was afraid he would lose his breath.

Finally it all stopped. Dean was flung loose from the cyclone of fabric and across the floor towards the doorway. There, two of Glinda’s soldiers stood, amused and giggling. Assured that all was normal here, the women nodded to each other and strode down the hallway away from the commotion.  
When Scraps finally paused, the diamond-studded tulle was back in place and several samples of material were hanging in complete order over one outstretched arm.

Scraps tossed the black silk remnant to Dean. “We’ll start with this.”

She pulled buttons and spools of thread from drawers in cabinets along the wall and settled down to sit on one of the tables. She took the silk from Dean and immediately began to snip shapes out of it.

“Don’t you need to measure me first?” Dean asked.

“Already did.”

Dean thought back to what all was going on during the furious leaping and dancing among the rows of fabric.

“Oh,” Dean sensed maybe he should feel violated.

But that odd feeling faded when minutes later Scraps handed him his long-sleeved black silk shirt, complete with a yoke, pleats and pearl buttons. It fit perfectly.

With new respect for the woman made of rags, he watched in awe as Scraps seamstressed on without pause.

Soon Scraps tossed Dean a pair of dark pleated pants with a belt built into the waistband.

“Try them on. Ozma is here and I’m sure she and Glinda will want a show.”

Dean pulled on the outfit and buttoned the belt in front of a mirror. He brushed his hair over a bit and smiled. Sure, he could give the ladies a show.


	30. Chapter 30

The boys grumbled when bedtime came. They wanted to play with Dean but he wouldn’t be back to their Indiana home until the morning. So off they trotted to their bedroom and soon all was quiet.

Eddie laid back in his bed and pondered the events of the day. Then he touched base with Timothy in Heaven, praised the Creator for blessings received, and rolled over to sleep.

Sometime during the night Eddie became conscious of a presence in his bedroom. Probably Castiel. No, not Castiel. Eddie opened an eye.

Beside his bed stood a creature holding a bag. The creature was scrawny, human-like and green with long pointy ears. The bag it held to its side hung completely to the floor.

For a moment it stood there with a puzzled expression, like it was there by accident. Then it realized Eddie was looking at it, so the creature and the bag vanished.

“Timothy, did you notice that?” Eddie remarked.

Timothy replied, “Yes, Eddie. A goblin. We do not know why it was there. And since we only communicate through human souls, we do not know where it went, but we believe you should check on the boys.”

Eddie rolled out of bed and started for the hallway. Before he even reached the doorway, he heard the boys’ shouts from their room.

“Get him, Viktor! Bite him!”

Objects were crashing to the floor and there was the sound of something thumping against the wall. Eddie smelled smoke emanating from a pissed-off dragon boy.

The goblin stumbled out of the boy’s room and struggled to crawl away with Viktor’s teeth clamped onto one bloody arm, with its clothes on fire, and with Vladimir on top of it slashing away strips of green skin with his claws. The terrified creature rolled itself up around its bag and vanished once again.

Once the smoke cleared, Eddie helped the boys re-organize their room.

“Good work,” Eddie told the two. “Now I feel confident you can take care of yourselves when I’m not here.”

Vladimir and Viktor both stood up straight with pride at Eddie’s praise.

“But, I think I’ll still need to send you both to your mom’s at the Vam San until Castiel and I can figure out why all this us happening. ‘Night boys.” Eddie turned to walk back to his room.

“G’nite, daddy.” “Night, papa.”

As Eddie laid back in his bed, it dawned on him that since Beryx’s death, he had at this moment offically become Vladimir’s papa. And Viktor had accepted Anica at the Vam San as mommy. It all seemed so perfect.

When Scraps heard that Professor Wogglebug had arrived at Glinda’s palace from the University she half-skipped and half-cartwheeled to the main entrance. Since Ozma was here, so was Tippetarious. Wogglebug was talking to the wooden beast when Scraps found him.

“Professor!” Scraps waved her arms from the top of the stairs. When she saw that he had noticed her, she clapped her hands and then slid down the alabaster rail down to him.

The professor pulled saddlebags off of a huge tiger.

“I do appreciate you carrying these for me,” Wogglebug said to the tiger.

“I always enjoy our conversations on the way,” responded the tiger as it stretched its body after the long trek. It walked towards the stables where there were animal friends to visit. This was the regular routine for it and Wogglebug.

The saddlebags held containers of the blue solution that Wogglebug was taking to the vampires at the Vam San in St. Louis. At the palace he would use the ballroom mirrors to step through to the building.

Scraps was looking for anything new and found it, a bottle of clear liquid with concave disks piled at the bottom. 

“What’s in here?” she asked the professor. She tipped the bottle sideways and the disks slipped about in the fluid. 

She held it over her head and noticed they all were a light blue color. “Are they alive? Are they jellyfish? Are they slices of fish jelly?”

“No, not that. And they are not alive,” replied Wogglebug. “They are a gift for a friend at the Vam San. We don’t use them here in Oz, but in America they do, and I think young Hank will be very happy to get them.”

Scraps helped the professor carry the containers up the stairs into the palace. It looked like he would be going to St. Louis about the same time she and Dean would be returning to Indiana.

Early morning at the Timms household found excited boys in boots and winter coats rushing into the kitchen where Eddie was preparing to fix French toast. “It snowed last night! It snowed!”  
We’re going out to play in the snow.” Vladimir announced. Viktor nodded with a big grin on his face.

“Okay,” said Eddie. “Ill call when breakfast is ready.”

The boys tore out the doorway and on the way out Vladimir announced, “Hey! There are flowers in the snow!”

Eddie pulled out the skillet, greased it and put it on the stove. Some milk from the refrigerator to mix into the already cracked eggs. Then he retrieved plates from the cabinet. Four of them. One for Dean since he and Scraps would soon arrive from their stay in Oz.

As he arranged the table, he noticed the pink rose on the table. It hadn’t wilted at all.

‘Wait,’ he thought. ‘Did one of the boys say something about flowers in the snow?’

“Crap!” Eddie turned off the stove and raced out of the house minus his coat or even his shoes. “Crap! Crap! Crap!”

Scraps waved to Glinda and her entourage as she backed through one of the ballroom mirrors. Dean followed, lugging a bag full of brand-new clothes, all having been approved earlier by Glinda and Ozma and their visitors during an impromptu fashion show featuring Dean. The palace staff had cheerfully fussed over the boy, getting his hair trimmed and spiked just right and his clothes laid out so he could change into them quickly.

Once they appeared in the barnyard, Scraps noticed them right off: poppies. A snowy field full of boldly orange poppies, and in the middle of it all lay Vladimir and Viktor, unconscious. With them was a goblin preparing to bag one of the boys.

“That’s Rose’s work!”

She looked around for a weapon. “Don’t you people leave things like hoes or baseball bats lying around?”

None found, so she marched into the poppy field anyway. One arm swung back pointing in Dean’s direction. “Stay back there. These flowers are dangerous.”

Dean followed anyway.

Scraps tore a beeline path through the poppies and was on the goblin before it could get Viktor into its bag. She threw her full weight into the creature and sent it tumbling, then pulled the bag off of Viktor and slipped it over the goblin.

She grabbed the open end of the bag and flung it against the ground. Wham!

“Take this hint...”

She swung the bag up and slammed it to the ground in the other direction. Wham!

“...you nasty little varmint.”

Wham!

“Go back to where you go...”

Wham!

“Below!” Wham! “Below!” Wham! “Below!” Wham!

Finally the bag with the creature inside disappeared to that place where goblins go.

“Scraaapsss...”

Scraps noticed Dean nearby standing wobbly and finally keeling over asleep.

Who to drag out of the poppy field first?

Scraps didn’t have to decide because Eddie was marching through the field towards them. As he walked, the snow turned into water and all of the poppies standing in it turned into water, too, that dropped down into the growing pool. The water sloshed around a bit and finally leveled out and turned back into a finely powdered snow.

“You grab one and I’ll grab one and we can carry the third between us back to the house,” said Eddie. And that is what they did.

On the way Scraps explained Rose’s MO. “If it involved plants, Rose had a hand in it. In Oz, she had fields of these poppies all around the land she reigned over to keep out any rescue attempts from the outside. Rescuers just fell asleep and did not wake up until the fields finally deteriorated after she died.”

“And as a witch she reigned over the Munchkins?”

“Right.”

“So......they weren’t just naturally short people?’

Scraps shrugged her shoulders. “The witch died, the people are still just as short, so I don’t know.”

Castiel and Sam popped into view as they approached the house.  
“Hey, guys!” Eddie said. “Join us for French toast and coffee, and we’ll tell you about our adventure.”


	31. Chapter 31

The Supernatural World of Vladimir and Victor, Chapter 31

Wogglebug noticed that things had changed drastically at the Vam San. There were far more people milling about. He heard hammers and saws towards one end of the building and saw trucks and workers out front.

Outside the back door, he watched the work crew and scratched his chin whiskers. A second story for the west wing? The workers were normal humans, but he recognized the gray eyes of the two people coming his direction.

Wogglebug pulled open the back door and bowed low with his walking cane extended out to his side. “Good morning, Miss Monica and Master Joseph! I wasn’t expecting such great activity here. Are you responsible for this, Joseph?”

“I’m overseeing the addition to the building,” explained Joseph. “With Griswald gone, his tenants are finding their way here and agreeing to try a blood-free life with the help of your blue solution.”

“That means we will need more of the stuff,” said Monica, now in the kitchen storage room. She returned to the dining room for more containers and carried them back.

Joseph spied the different bottle and picked it up. “So, what is this?”

Wogglebug took it from him and held it behind himself. “Not for you to know. Now, where is your brother?”

“Out front. He’s in charge of the restaurant. Anica is having it built as a place for the residents to earn their keep and to hide the complex from the road out front. The greater our population, the more privacy she thinks we should have.”

“I see,” said Wogglebug. “I’ll leave you to your duties.” And he headed out the front door to find Hank.

He found Hank with Anica. And Eddie. And Vladimir, Viktor, Dean, Sam and Castiel. Anica was fielding hugs from Vladimir and Viktor. Hank was looking down at little Dean, saying, “Hey we can use you inside the ductwork...”

Wogglebug tapped Hank’s shoulder with the bejeweled end of his walking stick. When Hank turned around, he handed him the container.

“This is for you,” said Wogglebug. “Do you understand contact lenses? Take this to your room and put one in each eye. You won’t actually feel them, but when you look in the mirror, you’ll know they are there.”

Hank gave him a puzzled look.

“Trust me. Put one in each eye and come back here.” Wogglebug turned away to visit with the group. “Anica! Tell us your new plans for this place.”

The group walked around the outside of the construction as Anica talked. Sam was looking over the workers, saying quietly to himself, “Good guy...Good guy...Good guy...”

“The restaurant will have a full basement,” Anica announced to the group. “And see the door in the middle of the back wall? The tunnel to the living quarters starts there. All of our supplies will be delivered to the restaurant and anything going to the Vam San will go through the tunnel. It will make us more secluded.”

“Here come Hank,” Wogglebug whispered to her.

“Ah, good!” said Anica. “Everyone look at Hank and see why he is grinning from ear to ear.”

Hank approached the group and he, indeed, was smiling broadly.

No one said anything. They looked at him and at each other. None of them could quit put their finger on the difference.

So Hank walked right up to Sam and looked him directly in the eyes.

“Oh! Blue eyes!” exclaimed Sam. “Hank has blue eyes.”

“Wogglebug’s new invention,” explained Anica. “It fits into the eye like a contact lens, but it forever becomes a part of the iris. Now we will know if the blue solution is active because the eyes will be their natural blue or brown. As the solution wears off, the eyes revert back to gray. Everyone will know if one of us is not keeping up on their nightly drink.

“Also, the lens will keep the wearer from being able to mesmerize others. As long as the blue solution is being drunk. If you aren’t drinking it, your eyes revert to gray eyes and you’ll regain the ability to mesmerize. That will help relieve some of the fear some of the residents have of each other. Not just between the American vampires and the Europeans, but among the Europeans themselves. Mesmerizing was useful when seeking prey, but now that we no longer do that, it has become a hindrance to getting along with each other.”

“You look like you are about to jump out of your skin, Hank,” Anica added. “Would a couple days off to visit Sioux Falls help?”

“Yes it would,” Hank quickly replied. “The bosses here can do without me for awhile.”

“Shoo!” Anica said with a waive of her hand. “Be sure you come back with a full gas tank.”

And Hank was off like a shot to the Vam San to make travel arrangements.

Castiel looked puzzled.

“Claire Novak is in Sioux Falls,” Sam explained to him.

Anica turned to one of the gray-eyed workers. “Gather up all of our people here and take them to the lounge. Then tell Joseph to do the same with our people in the other work party,”

The worker returned to hammering nails, so Anica tapped him on the shoulder. “Right now, dear. It wasn’t a suggestion.”

As the worker dropped everything and hurried away, Anica turned to the others. “We had might as well initiate the wearing of the lenses right now. And, Sam, you’ll have your chance to weed out the bad guys from the good guys all in one session. I’ve had the sneaking suspicion lately that we have a spy or two among us. I want to know why, and for whom.”

Eddie took the boys in through the Vam San’s front door into the lobby. That included Dean, whom everyone agreed, against his protests, would distract from the seriousness of the upcoming meeting. Eddie directed them to Hank’s room to encourage Hank on his planned trip to South Dakota as he packed his belongings for the trip. Dean had courting pointers, even though out of ear shot Sam questioned that Dean had ever courted any woman for the long-term plan that Hank had in mind.

From the east entrance of the building Sam and Castiel accompanied Anica into the lounge where Anica called for everyone to stand for inspection. The residents lined up along both sides of the long room, in some places two people deep. A sense of the seriousness of the meeting hung in the air about them.

“Okay, Sam, who’re the bad guys?” Anica turned Sam lose to do what he did best.

Sam looked the residents up and down as he walked down the center of the lounge. Some were used to this, but most were uncomfortable. After all, technically they were all vampires and the blue solution held that aspect at bay. Still there was that feeling that enough vampireness remained that would trigger Sam’s supernatural senses.

“That one.” Sam pointed to one particular resident, one that didn’t really stand out among the group. “Just that one.”

“You’re Travis, aren’t you?” Anica said more than asked.

Travis nodded uncomfortably.

Anica glanced out into the hallway to see Joseph and the boys watching them.

“Good, Joseph, you’re here,” she said. “Come show the others why you’re taking vacation.”

Joseph proudly entered the lounge and glanced around the room at all of the faces. He held the jar of lenses at his side.

A couple of whispers of “they’re not gray” could be heard.

Anica began her spiel. “We are adding a new level of security here at the Vam San. Joseph here, is the first to place the lenses in the jar he is holding into his eyes. You can see his irises are the blue color they were before he was turned. The lenses do that. As long as he uses the blue solution he will have blue eyes, but if he fails to keep up with drinking it, his eyes will return to gray.

“As long as the lenses show your normal eye color, they will also block you from being able to mesmerize others. You know what problems we’ve had with that. So, with this it stops.

“Everyone here needs to have the lenses in their eyes before they leave the room. You won’t feel them, but be aware they are there permanently. If you leave without lenses, you don’t come back.”

“Travis, here, gets to be first.” Anica nodded towards Travis, who stepped forward to face Joseph.

“You want to put them in, or shall I?” Joseph asked as he fished two lenses out of the jar.

Travis opted to put them in himself. A mirror was available but he managed without it. He blinked a few time and looked up. His eyes were still gray. Now everyone knew why Sam had singled him out. He had not been drinking the blue solution.

“Come on, honey. We need to talk,” Anica said to Travis. She motioned for him to follow her and Castiel into the hall.

Then she pointed for him to follow Castiel down into the basement, where gruesome deeds had been done in the past. She and Sam solemnly followed them down the steps. Travis was aware that if he could not explain himself, he was not coming back up.


	32. Chapter 32

The Supernatural World of Vladimir and Viktor, Chapter 32

The basement at the Vam San did not usually appear as foreboding as it did now. Anica purposely flipped on only two lights for just this effect. A spy from the East coast was a serious matter. That meant that, even though Eric Griswald was gone, there was still someone with some sway over the gray eyes.

Castiel motioned Travis to a chair below the only light in an interior room. He would be the interrogator because he would not be influenced by Travis’ eyes. Anica and Sam wisely moved into the next room. If Castiel needed them, he would call, but it was more likely he would need them to be shielded from what he might have to do.

Castiel looked down into Travis’ face from where he stood. They were looking eye-to-eye, but the angel was looking beyond the vampire’s eyes. Deeper. Into the mind. Searching for a memory that for some reason was purposely hidden.

“Who is your master?” demanded Castiel.

The vampire just looked back at him, not speaking. But synapses in his brain reacted defensively.

So, Castiel dug deeper, discarding Travis’ thoughts and feelings that blocked the way. First, minor pokes, then the mental shredding began.

The vampire twitched and bared his teeth in defiance. And pain.

It was there somewhere, otherwise Sam wouldn’t have targeted Travis as ‘bad guy.’

Castiel asked again, “Who is your master?”

The vampire’s body began to twist in agony. His contorted face began to scale and spot. “Arrrrrrgh!”

Castiel mercilessly bore straight into the tightest of the man’s guarded secrets. He examined them and destroyed them while searching.

Finally Travis’ body convulsed and shriveled. His face sank in, and he gasped his last breath.

Castiel left him and walked up to Anica in the next room. “His master is Belladonna. Who is Belladonna?”

Upstairs Hank’s send-off party was gathered by Anica’s car out front. While Hank stuffed his suitcase into the trunk, Monica place a cooler and a bag of munchies in the passenger seat. Vladimir and Viktor were all hyped up as if they were joining Hank on the trip north. Amidst all the waving and good-byeing Hank drove off.

 

Dean’s phone rang during the celebration. It was from Jill in Memphis.

“Hi, Jill. What’s up?”

“May I talk with Dean?” Jill asked.

“This is Dean!”

“Very funny. Is this Vladimir? Put Dean on the phone.”

“No, seriously. This is Dean.”

“Are you on helium? You sound like you’re ten.”

“Seven actually. I drank something I shouldn’t have and it had a hex attached.”

“I can’t tell if you are joking. Put Dean on. Or another adult.”

Dean gave up and handed his phone to Monica.

“Hi, Jill. This is Monica. I’m afraid that was Dean you were talking to. And it is a witch’s hex. He’s in a seven-year-old body right now. Weren’t you warned that anything can happen when you deal with the Winchesters? Here’s Dean again.”

“It’s me again.”

“Okay, you are Dean.” Jill relented. “I was calling because Andros and I are preparing to go to a vampire’s nest in Omaha, one that he identified through the Carpathia Transport records. Then we want to visit one of my sister’s friends from the Black Widows gang. Arachne sent one of her creatures to my residence. Fortunately, Andros rescued me. We really need to get to the bottom of this case.”

“Ha! So, Andy was a hero again,” Dean interjected. “Good for him!”

“Is that Andros on the phone?” Anica had just come up from downstairs. “I need to ask him a question.”

“Okay,” Dean replied. “Hey, Jill, could you put Andy on the phone? Is he anywhere around?”

“Sure! Hang on...”

Dean heard the phone being laid on the table and Jill walking into another room and saying, “Andros, your boyfriend’s on the phone.”

Soon a timid voice came over the phone, “Hello?”

“Andy! Your boyfriend?” Dean asked.

“Uh, Jill likes fabricating social situations and teasing me with them. Ignore her. Listen! Now that I have been able to translate the spell book she found, she’s been wanting to go to the clubhouse and call up Arachne. I’m not ready. So we compromised and are going after one of the club members to try to learn more about the goddess first. Are you and Sam free?”

“Yeah. I’ll talk with Sammy and call you back. First, Anica wants to talk with you. Here she is.”

“Andros, dear.” It was Anica. “We had a visit from a gray-eye spy for someone named Belladonna. Does the name mean anything?”

“The one I know is queen over a colony of vampires in Angola, in Africa. I don’t see why she would have any interest in anything in America.”

“Well this spy came with a migration from the East Coast,” explained Anica. “We have been getting a lot of arrivals since Eric Griswald’s death. I thought that it was just that they were looking for other options since they no longer have a leader to follow. But it is beginning to look like someone from the outside intends to fill the vacuum.”

“If it is Belladonna, I hope she is just curious,” said Andros. “She has powers beyond the normal vampire and terrorizes her subjects. Those I have talked to talk about her with carefully measured words. It is like she has some unnatural way of hearing what they say and seeing what they do. She needs to be kept on her side of the ocean.” 

“We need to break up the population on the coast and get as many as we can into our compound in a hurry then. We can’t leave anything that she can organize into her own colony here. Thanks, Andros.”

Anica handed the phone back to Dean.

Behind her, Sam was talking to Castiel. “We need to dispose of the body downstairs.”

“I already took care of it,” replied Castiel.

“Really?” Sam was impressed. “Where did you put it?”

“Do you need the body back?” Castiel asked.

“Well, no. I was just curious as to where you sent it.”

“Okay.”

Now Sam was nonplused. And he never did find out where Castiel placed the remains of Travis’ body. 

Anica stepped out the back door and saw Eddie and the boys talking with Joseph behind the east wing. Vladimir noticed her immediately and was tugging on Eddie’s hand and pointing her direction.

Once she caught up with them, she looked over some mundane construction activity that Vladimir and Viktor seemed to find incredibly exciting. Then she put her hand on Eddie’s shoulder and turned him to walk away from the commotion.

“Eddie, dear, we can’t have the boys here. Travis was a spy for a vampire ogress named Belladonna. I’m not comfortable having the boys here until this issue with her gets settled. I know you can’t have them at your place and apparently the Winchester’s place isn’t any more secure. Is there another option?”

“Well,” replied Eddie. I have residences in Montana, Utah and Tennessee that they could stay in, but I shouldn’t be with them. They would be safe in Oz...”

He thought for awhile and finally decided. “Let’s start with a couple of weeks in Idaho. It’s time for a short visit with the boys’ friend Zeke Overholt. I bet his folks would be willing to host a stayover with Valdimir, Viktor and Dean if I added a trailer for them and Zeke with Sam to babysit. What parents wouldn’t be thrilled to have a vacation from the kids. Zeke will be just next door.”

Anica thought positively about the idea. “Let’s do that.”


	33. Chapter 33

The Supernatural World of Vladimir and Viktor, Chapter 33

The trailer was new. Eddie had arranged for it to be set up beside the Rich and Amy Overholt home in Idaho Falls. It had just recently been delivered and fresh snowflakes were just beginning to fill in the ruts in the deep snow.

When Eddie arrived with his sons, and Dean and Castiel, they found a grinning Ezekiel in front of the trailer with his arms wrapped around boxes of Christmas lights. Vladimir and Viktor clambered out of the truck to check out the decorations. Castiel joined them, looking back at Eddie with a worried look. Dean hopped out, thinking how it had been years and years since he had ever decorated anything for Christmas. He felt he really should be out killing something demonic. 

“Hiya, Zeke!” Eddie called out as he stepped out of the truck and unloaded a couple bags of groceries from the back. “Let Zeke show you how to put up decorations, Castiel. It’ll be fun.”

Eddie entered the Overholt home and returned with Amy behind him carrying a tray of hot drinks. He hugged Vladimir and Viktor from behind and was soon on his way to the highway, waving broadly at the group. Castiel half-heartedly waved back from atop a ladder, clutching a bag of clips.

They were an hour into decorating when it finally dawned on Viktor that Eddie was not coming back anytime soon. “Don’t worry,” Vladimir assured him. “We can call papa on his cell phone when we are done.”

Dean was not pleased with the final product. “The lights under the eaves aren’t even. That loop is a lot lower that the one next to it...”

No one else cared. Amy Overholt had just called everyone into the house for chili and they were eager to get warm again. The wonderful smell of gingerbread coming out from the kitchen was irresistible.

Later, after Amy pulled out some game boards for the boys to decide on to which play, she noticed that the head-count was two noggins short. She looked out the window to see young Dean sitting on Castiel’s shoulders and evening up the lights on the trailer.

With young Dean in Idaho, Sam had access to the Impala. But Jill insisted on using her car, partly because it was already loaded with supplies, but mostly because she was the FBI leading agent. They were just now driving into Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where they would be looking for Abby St. Clarion, a Black Widows biker club member. With luck she would give up secrets on the goddess Arachne.

“So, what color eyes did you get?” Sam asked Andros sitting in back.

“Brown. That’s their natural color.”

“How will I know it’s you now?” Sam teased.

“Oh, you’ll know.” Andros bared his fangs in mock derision when Sam glanced back at him.

Sam chuckled. The hunter business had been so serious with his brother. But, here they were, looking to find a witch capable of calling up deadly giant spiders and it felt like a fun prospect.

As Jill steered off of the Interstate into downtown Cedar Rapids, Sam checked the GPS. The residence in question would be through town on the far east side. Jill followed directions until, while slowing for a traffic light, she suddenly took a hard right turn and followed anxiously behind another car. She was watching the crowd on the sidewalk.

Sam followed her line-of sight towards a tall black-haired woman wearing a black biker’s jacket. As she prepared to enter a building, the woman glanced in their direction.

“My God, that’s Sandra!” Jill stomped on the brake, throwing both passengers roughly against their seat belts. She put the car in park and opened the car door to get out. “That’s my sister!”

Jill hopped out and rushed towards the woman, who, upon seeing her, hurried into the building. Jill caught the door before it closed. Andros had hopped out, too, and was right behind Jill rushing up a stairway.

Sam was left alone to park the car somewhere. He had recognized the woman’s face. Jill’s sister Sandra was one of the witches Jill had killed at the Black Widow’s biker club house in Memphis. But they had just now found her, alive, in Des Moines.

Eddie was still in Idaho, headed south. Sometime back he had turned off of the Interstate and onto a lesser highway that wound through the snow-covered mountains. Along an icy mountainside stretch of the road the truck slid slightly into the opposite lane and Eddie slowed and watched more closely until he saw a break a break in the guardrail protecting traffic from the steep drop on that side. This would be the miracle site.

Rather than risk going over the edge, Eddie drove on around the curve and found a level spot into which to pull over. He walked back to the missing rail and looked down the drop, far down, to see the wheels of a red car on its top at the bottom of the first drop.

“Timothy?” Eddie asked his core soul. “Was I too late?”

“No. This is an accident.”

“So, was I not supposed to save this one?”

“That’s not it. We had no arrangement with the soul for this one. So we did not know this would happen.”

“But, if I had been here earlier, I could have saved this one, too.”

“Yes. But we did not know earlier that this would happened first. Angela Gevenna will be at this point in ten minutes.”

Eddie was shaken, but he had a rescue to perform. Angela would have to go through the guardrail to start the “death.” What could he use to built up a support to catch her after that? All he saw below was a straight drop with some rocks jutting out and some patches of snow. He could not see anything below the trees further down. There was nothing to work with, nothing he could transform.

“Eddie.” Timothy broke Eddie’s reverie. “Eddie, there’s a semi coming right now. The road is too icy. It will not make the curve.”

Eddie heard the motor from around the mountain, then heard brakes being applied. Around the corner the cab came into view. It slipped across the lane and back into the inner lane. The semi-trailer did not. It slid along the far rail for a distance and then began to roll over it.

As soon as the cab passed him, Eddie raised up his arms and walked forward. As he did, the back part of the cab and the hitch to the trailer disappeared into a cloud of fine snow. The separated trailer went over the rail and plunged down the mountainside. It rolled a few times and then bounced end-over-end until it came to a stop near the red car. Pallets of merchandise were left scattered about.

“Eddie, here comes Angela...”

Eddie saw nothing below to work with. He looked up. ‘Yeah, I can use that.’

He dashed across the road and pressed his hands to the mountain above. Rock turned to water, forming a water cavern in the mountainside. Eddie forced the water out and across the road, then down the drop-off on the other side as Angela’s car came into view, sliding sideways.

He froze that water in place and flushed more on top of it, forming an up-sweep with the water, and froze that, too. He finished adding a border on either side of the whole creation as the car slid off the road and up the ice ramp and back again onto the road.

Eddie walked up to a dazed Angela in her car, now safely back on the road.

With a warning from Eddie, she drove cautiously on down the highway. Out of her sight, Eddie touched the ice formation and turned it into snow, then watched the mini-avalanche it caused with some pleasure before offering respects to the soul of the victim below.

Next, to turn the ice on the road into a vapor that blew away with the wind. Then back to his truck to chat with the other truck driver who was parked nearby, contemplating his recent brush with death.

As soon as a patrol car arrived and the incident was reported, Eddie continued his trek to his barn in Utah and a visit to Hades.

“I wish I would have known to save a three of them,” he lamented.

Timothy analyzed the situation. “We are wondering about our part in missing the driver of the red car. She had no mark to be saved from a death then, but there was also no acceptance to die in one. It seems somehow we could have foreseen it. Shebbeth thinks maybe we should have examined the scene from further back in time when making plans. Regardless, keep in mind that you went to save one life and still saved two.”

Visiting with Ezekial had reminded Eddie of something he had used to get into the locked-up mining office in Nevada when chasing after Zeke who had just been possessed by a demon. As soon as he reached his Utah property, he searched around in the barn and quickly found the door in question. It was a magical door Glinda had given him and he had forgotten about it after its first use. With it was a bucket of dust that he sprinkled all up and down the door.

Eddie carried the door to the mountainside spot where he usually dissolved open the passage to Hell and then closed it up again after every return.

This time he pressed the latched edge of the door against the same rocky surface. It sealed. Eddie closed the door against the mountain and opened it up again. Instead of rock, this time there was the passage behind it.

Eddie wondered why he had not thought of it before. It was so easy. With the dust he could enter the passage through this door. Without the dust everybody else would just find a stone wall.

All these months it had sat in the barn while Eddie with through the tedious process of transforming the chemicals in the rock to open and seal it.

The passage led straight to Hell. But take the passage to the left where Eddie had marked the wall with streaks of copper, and one was led to Hades.

Eddie turned left. He was going to visit the Fates. They each should have one good right eye now that grew from the false flesh Eddie had pressed into the right eye sockets not long ago. This visit he would to do the same procedure to the other empty eye sockets so that soon the three women would each have two good eyes. Eddie smiled and wondered what the women had decided to do with the lone eye that they used to have to pass among themselves to see with.


	34. Chapter 34

The Supernatural World of Vladimir and Viktor, Chapter 34

 

The drive to Sioux Falls was exhilarating, but as Hank reached the city the sensation faded and now there was some dread. For all his practicing on the way, he was losing confidence that Claire would respond positively. He hoped one of the others at her home would greet him first and give him some moral support.

He pulled Anica’s car up along the curb and got out to approach Sheriff Mill’s house. Should he have brought a gift? No, no. This wasn’t a date, that would be overkill. Just present his good news. He was soon knocking at the door.

Jody Mills opened the door. Hank was relieved. He had a chance to scope out the situation.

“Uh, is Claire home?” he asked meekly. He only saw Anna in the livingroom behind the sheriff.

“Oh, Hank!” said Jody. “Yes, she’s out back. Um, does she know you were coming? ‘cause she is preparing to leave...”

“Yeah. Thank’s okay. I wanted to talk with you and Anna first anyway. I have some news I think Claire will like. Can I come in?”

“Sure! Anna, Claire’s friend Hank is here,” Jody ushered the man into the livingroom.

On the way in Hank pointed to his eyes and asked Jody, “you notice they are blue now? Anica has all of us putting these disks in our eyes – like contact lenses but they stay. As long as my eyes do not turn gray, the blue solution I take is working. Plus I can’t mesmerize anyone as long as my eyes are their normal color.”

“I thought Claire would like to know,” he added. “She said if I had blue eyes things would be okay. Um, I think.”

Anna was now behind Jody, looking into Hank’s eyes. “So blue, you’re normal and gray, you’re a vampire? Yeah, Claire should like to know that.”

“Have a seat, Hank, and I’ll call her in”

Hank and Anna settled in on the couch as they heard Jody out back. “Come in for a sec, Claire. We have company. You want something to drink?”

“Coffee.”

Jody went to the kitchen and Claire made a quick stop into her room to pick up a couple of things to take to her car. She grabbed her cup of coffee and followed Jody into the livingroom.

“Oh. What are you doing here, Hank?”

Anna jumped in to smooth the conversation. “Hank wanted to share some good news with us. Remember when you told us he promised to have blue eyes again? Look at his eyes.”

Claire did look at Hank. “Yeah, I see, they’re blue. Did you get colored contact lenses?

“No!” Hank said excitedly. “Wogglebug made them. They are part of my eyes. My irises are blue when the blue solution is working and turn to gray when it isn’t working. And as long as my eyes are blue I can’t mesmerize you, or anybody. Isn’t that great! Now you’ll know if I’m safe to be around!”

Hank looked directly into Claire’s eyes with a big smile. “See? No mental messing going on.”

Claire did not seem as enthused as Hank. She turned away to pick up her things. “That’s good, Hank. Uh, I have to go. You should have called ahead. I don’t have time for a visit. I’ll see you at the Vam San.”

“Where do you have to go?”

“Hunting. I’ll be gone about a week.”

“Okay...but I could help sometime now. Right?”

“I’ll see you a the San.” Claire nodded at Hank and then hurried to the door.

Jody and Anna looked at each other in surprise at Claire’s reaction. They expected some reservations, Claire tended to hold in her feelings. But not this coolness.

“But I could help her,” Hank said weakly to them. “I’m strong and I can climb walls and I have claws. I could protect her...”

“Give her time to sort it out, Hank.” Jody squeezed his shoulders. “Things suddenly changed faster than she was prepared for. Come on. Stay here for the night and talk with us. She did say she would see you at the Vam San.”

Hank felt better. Sure, Claire’s feelings just needed to catch up with his.

He joined in a hearty meal at the sheriff’s home and enjoyed the pleasant conversation with Jody and Anna. They would all need to be up early for work the next morning; he was expected back at the restaurant in St. Louis. So they retired early.

Hank still became restless late during the night and in his wandering the house in search of the bathroom he came across the list of Claire’s planned hunting sites. They would be dangerous. He could not sleep at all now, knowing what she was facing alone.

So, in the morning all three ate an early breakfast and left the house early. Hank thanked the others profusely for their kind company and left in Anica’s car as the other two prepared to leave for work.

Hank drove out of Sioux Falls with determination. He had a destination in mind, but it was not the Vam San in St. Louis.

Jill, Andros and Sam were following Sandra up some stairs in a large brick building in Des Moines. At the first landing, they paused for Sam to sense things.

“Bad girl, that way,” he said, pointing down a particular hall. He led the posse down the hall to the entrance of a large room in which white-haired ladies milled about examining hanging tapestries.

Sandra was in the room pressed against the wall by the doorway and Jill slipped into position beside her. Sam and Andros quietly let themselves into the room, too.

Sam nudged Andros and pointed to an unusually, tall, smooth-skinned woman in a deep green lace gown. She was proudly explaining the prize tapestry of the event. It was hers and it was immaculate. A gaggle of patrons of the art examined it closely.

“Not a flaw,” said one. “Such colors,” gasped another. “I loooove the theme, dear.”

“A really bad girl,” Sam whispered to Andros. “I think we’ve found Arachne.”

“How’d you get back?” Jill hissed at her sister. “Weren’t you killed?”

Sandra shrugged her shoulders. “It all went black and then we were all in some other place with her.” She nodded at the tall woman.

The tall woman had noticed the quartet’s arrival. Sam saw her stern look in their direction. She was mouthing something in their direction.

The four disappeared from the room and found themselves in a dimly lit room with no obvious exits.

“This is the place,” Sandra whispered to Jill.

“Αντιστρέψτε αυτό το ξόρκι,” shouted Andros.

And they were back in place at the tapestry show. Arachne noticed their quick return.

In Hades, Laeches said to Clotho,”Did you notice? We had humans suddenly appear in Hades, including an apprentice of Arachne. Then they returned to the surface.”

“Excuse me, Eddie,” Clothos told Eddie. “An immortal from here was granted special permission to visit the surface, but with restrictions. We think she has been meddling with the living. I need to leave to talk with Hades and Athena about it. Thank you for your visit, Eddie.”

“Did you say Arachne?” They had Eddie’s full attention. “I know people who have been dealing with giant spiders called up by followers of Arachne. Do you know who the humans were?”

Now Eddie had the Fates’ full attention.

“No,” Leaches said. “But, I can take you to where they went. Atropos, find Arachne’s thread. We may need for you to cut it. Let’s go Eddie.”

“I’m going to address Athena now, “said Clothos, who disappeared.

A moment later, Eddie and Leaches joined the line with Sam, Andros, and Jill and Sandra Collins at the tapestry exhibit.

Arachne noticed this, too.

As things wound down at the exhibit, she glanced towards Leaches who gave her a stern look and pointed agressively towards the door in the back of the room. Then Leaches and the others, including Sandra, left the room out the main entrance.

Leaches, Eddie, Sam, Andros, Jill and Sandra gathered in the quiet back hall behind the exhibition hall.

Sandra was immediately in front of Andros asking, “Did you bring us back from that room? How did you do that?”

“I gave the command to undo any previous spell cast. It’s in the spell book,” said Andros matter-of-factly.

Sandra was amazed. “But that old book was all gobbledegook. We only learned exactly what Arachne taught us. You could understand what was written, and the diagrams?”

“I know the language,” Andros responded without embellishment.

At this moment, the group noticed Arachne had followed them from the main entrance and was just turning the corner into the back hall. The small spiders accompanying her and webbing forming along the walls and the ceiling as she approached showed that she was prepared to duel with the whole group of them if need be.

“I hear that you have been the cause of much carnage up here, Arachne,” Leaches informed her. “That is not what was agreed upon when Athena got Hades to allow you to into the outer world. You were to pursue your weaving craft among the humans and nothing more. Clothos is meeting both of them for a tribunal with them and you. Prepare to come with us.”

“And if I’m not ready?” asked Arachne. Her eyes suddenly grew and formed an unblinking roundesss and two more formed on her forehead. Her darkening smooth skin pushed out and up forcing her hair to pile high. Her wrists became very thin and bristly under the sleeves and so did her fingers. Her gown began to swell behind her and Sam was not sure he wanted to know what all was forming back there.

Sam, Jill and Sandra stepped back. But Andros stepped forward. Sam hoped Andros knew something that he didn’t because so far it seemed like a foolish move.

“You’re ready,” announced Andros confidently. “Τα μανιτάρια αντιστάθμισης εμποδίζουν την κίνησή της”

Instantly there were green and wrinkly grapefruit-sized balls of fruit piled around Arachne. As they rolled up her gown and under it they spewed a white stickly goo that coated the gown around her. It bound her hands to her sleeves and her sleeves to her sides. As they approached her face they paused. All Arachne could do at the moment was glare angrily at Andros.

Sam whispered to Andros, “Are those hedge apples? Like what people put in the basement to discourage spiders? Really?”

“Well, the incantation called for Chinese che fruit,” admitted Andros. “These were the closest I was able to conjure up. But thankfully they worked.”

“Damn, Andros, I thought Dean was ballsy!” Sam responded.

“Show of hands,” announced Jill cheerfully. “Who votes to travel to Hades?

All but Arachne, who could not move her arms, raised their hands. That included Leaches who caught on to the spirit of the moment.

Leaches snapped her fingers and the goddesses and humans alike disappeared.


	35. Chapter 35

The Supernatural World of Vladimir and Viktor, Chapter 35

 

Young Dean was feeling good. He finally had access to his stash and was sitting on the kitchen table at the Men of Letters bunker with a now-empty bourbon bottle in hand.

“Aaaah! I missed this.” He leaned back and let the alcohol take effect.

“What are you doing? You came out here for potato chips.” Castiel was standing in the doorway with a Coleman lantern and an armload of extra blankets for the trailer back in Idaho.

Dean straightened up suddenly and slipped down off of the table. He attempted a coherent reply but ended up just standing with a slight wobble and mouthing a line of babble.

“Yeah,” Castiel said. “A brand-new body and you are defiling it already. You should know a seven-year-old body can’t handle the amount of alcohol you drank. We are going. Now!”

Dean’s fuzzy vision fell on the pink rose on the kitchen table.

‘Hey, that flower is still alive,’ Dean thought, and he grabbed hold of its vase just as Castiel popped them both back to the trailer.

Zeke, Vladimir and Viktor were in the two bed sleeping room at the back of the trailer. Vladimir and Viktor were cuddled together in one bed, already asleep. Zeke was lying awake on the other bed, watching Viktor’s dragon tail swinging gently from under the blanket and over the side of their bed.

‘Oh, great!’ Castiel thought to himself, remembering Eddie’s instructions to keep Ezekial from learning about the boys’ special talents. He threw up his hand as an ‘oh well’ gesture. It will all work out.

He turned back to see Dean sitting at the kitchen table and gazing at the rose.

“Here, eat these,” Castiel told Dean as he pushed the bag of chips in Dean’s direction. “Maybe it will sop up some of that alcohol.”

Dean complied. “It’s still alive,” he slurred, pointing at the flower.

“Yeah, still alive,” Castiel confirmed. 

He returned to the sleeping room, where Zeke was still absorbed with Viktor’s tail. When the boy looked up at Castiel and pointed at the tail, Castiel shrugged his shoulders.

“I’ll explain in the morning, Zeke. Go to sleep now.” Maybe Castiel could zap the boy’s brain just enough to remove that memory, but first he wanted to see how it could be handled otherwise. At some point Zeke should probably know about his friends’ secrets.

Somewhere far below our happy campers, Leaches, Arachne, Sam, Andros, Jill and Sandra suddenly appeared in a huge marble hall in Hades. The pillars gave the impression of the Parthenon in Athens. Outside them the ground sloped down into vineyards and forests that might have been on Grecian hillsides two thousand years ago.

There Clothos and Atropos were waiting, along with the goddess Athena, who sat on an extravagantly upholstered throne at one end of the great hall. 

Leaches whispered to Eddie before she joined her goddess sisters. Eddie motioned the humans to follow him to some chairs to sit. That left a defiant Arachne, sticky hedge apples and all, to stand alone in the spotlight.

Athena laughed. “Arachne, you look silly! Who did this to you? Come here.”

Arachne was suddenly standing before the throne without the fruit stuck to her costume. Free at last, she swung around and pointed a slender black finger towards Andros.

“He did it! That! That despicable human! That cockroach!” she shouted.

Athena lifted a hand in front of her mouth to hide her amusement at Arachne’s furious display of anger. In a second Andros suddenly found himself standing in front of Athena as well.

“What is your name?” she asked without a trace of harshness.

“Andros Pesti.” From his new vantage Andros noticed that the goddess was a rather pleasant and patient person, not at all like the imposing marble statues that once represented her power among the gods and people.

“How did you do this?”

“I studied her spell book.”

“And are you the reason the humans appeared in Arachne’s room recently and disappeared again?”

“I am the reason we disappeared again.”

“I am impressed. How well do you know the contents of her spell book?”

“I have it memorized.” Andros was ready to demonstrate, if necessary.

Athena seemed satisfied with what she heard from Andros. She nodded to the Collins sisters and they were suddenly standing along side Andros.

“So are the two of you apprentices of Arachne? How skilled are you?” Athena asked them.

Sandra meekly raised a hand. “Uh. I’m not an apprentice. Sort of a follower? I didn’t weave anything...”

Athena leaned down. “Then what did you do for Arachne?”

Something compelled Sandra to tell the truth and she heard herself confessing that she “was empowered to entrap men to be food for Arachne’s spiders.” 

Jill then raised her hand and said, “I wasn’t a follower. I tracked down Arachne’s followers and killed four of them at their club house.”

Sandra’s head jerked in her sister’s direction and she gave her a what-the-Hell look. Until this moment her mind was blurry as to how she had died and if Jill had indeed shot her. Jill responded with a get-over-it-I’m-your-big-sister look. Sandra seemed to accept that.

“And Eddie Timms. I know you already. Come here and join Leaches and the others. She let Eddie advance on his own.

Finally, Athena sat back and her eyes scanned over the people below her. She knew enough.

Athena stepped down from her throne and descended closer to her visitors. There was no need to be so imposing.

She addressed Arachne first: “Arachne, I love you very much. Enough to give you your form after you died and to arrange with Hades to let you return to the surface in human form to share your skills of weaving. I am sad to learn that you strayed beyond our agreed boundaries. Hades would be furious if I brought this up to him, so I will not. Instead, the Fates will end your right to access the world of the living.”

Arachne appeared to be genuinely ashamed. She had betrayed Athena’s trust and now she was to lose her joy of sharing her art with an audience. She would only be allowed to weave and appreciate its beauty alone.

“Clothos, take the rest back with you to your room. You and your sisters can determine whether Arachne’s four deceased followers will stay here or return to life on the surface.”

“Eddie, would you take the humans back with you to the surface? I believe it would be a gentler transition than how they arrived here.”

Eddie nodded in agreement.

“And, lastly, Andros Pesti. Do you know the spell book well enough to call it here? You do that and I’ll allow you to remember the spells you learned.”

Andros smiled proudly: “Ο τόμος έρχεται.” And instantly he was holding the spell book, which Athena took from his hands.

“Behave,” Athena admonished him. “Use you knowledge wisely, so we will never need to take it from you.” 

“We are leaving. Thank you Athena for your wise decision,” said Clothos.

Athena approached Arachne to comfort her over her lost rights as Clothos spirited the others to the Fates’ lair.

It was early the next morning and Claire Novak drove up to a nondescript house in the middle of nowhere important. She had previously killed a demon and its victim’s body was riding along in the trunk of her car. With the bodies she expected to gain from this house she would have enough to make it worth disposing of them. If she could contact Castiel, he would dispose of them. If not, there was still some space in Sheriff Mills’ back yard.

Reportedly three sisters had recently moved into the unlighted abode. No one ever saw them and no one ever visited the place. But Claire knew about the reports of mysterious deaths in the area and this was the obvious place to start her search.

Claire left the car out of sight and walked up to the house from the side. She circled around it until she came to the picture window in the front. She peeked in.

Inside she saw three pre-teen girls, obviously sisters of similar age, sitting in a row on hard back chairs in the middle of the room. They were quiet and unmoving for awhile, but suddenly all three head turned and looked right at her with no particular expression on their faces. But they stayed seated.

Claire jerked back out of view. That was...creepy!

She circled the other way around the house and approached the back door. On it was a neatly printed sign.

It read, “Claire Novak. Let yourself in. Please do not hurt us.”

Claire looked at her dagger. This had to be some kind of trick, so she held it closely as she tried the doorknob. The door opened quietly and she let herself in.

She stepped into the room the girls were in and they were still seated quietly. She noticed by their pale complexions that they were vampires who hadn’t fed for a long time. Then her eyes fell upon three empty vials lying on the small table in front of the girls.

Finally one girl spoke. “A man named Hank told us if we drank the blue water in the vials that you would come and take us to a safe place.”


	36. Chapter 36

The Supernatural World of Vladimir and Viktor, Chapter 36

It was crowded in the Fates’ lair. Not only had the Fates appeared there with Eddie, Andros, Sam and Jill, but so did the Black Widow bikers both living and dead, with Sandra.

Clothos counted the ends of the cluster of threads she held in her hand, then counted the bikers.

“I have a matching number of threads, plus one for Arachne,” she said. “How shall we determine where they will go, Leaches?”

Leaches already had the solution. “The four who died will decide. Sandra, which would you prefer: life back on Earth as you experienced it, or your life in Hades?”

“Earth, definitely,” declared Sandra and the other three nodded their approval.

“It’s Hell down here,” added one of the others. Eddie and the Fates let that comment slide.

“Then it has been decided,” declared Leaches. “When Atropos cuts the threads, Arachne’s influence on Earth ends, and each of you will be returned to the last place you were. Four of you will need to work on an excuse for your absence since your deaths, because in one hour all of you will forget your association with Arachne and anything she taught you.”

“Remember to make me look good when you make up you excuse, Sandra,” Jill called out to her sister. “You’ll forget, but I’ll still remember. Don’t make me kill you again!”

“You wouldn’t,” retorted Sandra.

Then Atropos cut the threads and the ex-witch bikers were gone, back to their places on the surface.

“I guess it’s our turn,” Eddie said. “Come on guys, it’s time to leave.

Eddie, Sam, Andros and Jill walked the corridor out of Hades. At one corner Eddie pointed out the copper streaks.

“Remember these?” he asked Sam. “I added a few streaks of platinum to them when I found Hades. Here is where the Hades and Hell passages meet.”

Sam looked around. “I don’t see the room where you and Dean saved that guy...”

“The rooms aren’t geographically stable,” explained Eddie. “They aren’t physical, though you wouldn’t be able to convince the tortured victims in each room.

After a pause, Eddie made a decision. After all, they were already here and why not take advantage of the occasion.

“Hey! You guys wanna save a condemned soul?”

“You sound like that’s fun,” commented Jill, aghast at the idea.

“Actually it is, in some really morbid sense,” explained Sam. “Okay Eddie, maybe just one.”

So the foursome walked quietly into the passage to Hell. Eddie and Sam led. Jill and Andros followed them cautiously.

As they walked the screams and wails grew stronger. Shortly, Eddie paused and pressed against the passage wall, saying, “Here we go.”

They were looking into a deep well from the top. On a ledge at their level was a terrified man being held still by a demon. His shoulders dropped at the sound of shattering glass below.

The demon pushed its victim off the ledge and into the path of large shards of glass projecting upward. The first ones sliced through his body, spraying blood and flesh. The cuts healed in time for the next set of shards to arrive. This continued until the body reached the bottom, when the action stopped and the man was back on the ledge as before.

The glass-shattering sound happened again and the demon once again pushed the man off the ledge to start it all over again.

“That’s enough,” said Eddie.

He drew the demon’s essence out its body and dissolved it in his hand. The body fell into the well.

As soon as the victim’s body reappeared on the ledge, Eddie was there asking, “Would you like to be reborn?”

The cursed one’s confirmation could be heard through the sound of the next explosion below.

Eddie drew an orb from the body and let the now-lifeless form fall. This time the shards shredded it into strips of flesh and slivers of bone, leaving just a gory mass once it reached the bottom.

At the entrance Eddie touched the floor and turned the ledge and walls and the mechanism below into water, which then disappeared into a vapor.

Jill was still gazing transfixed into the nothingness and Andros had to pull her back.

“I know I’m a vampire, but I can’t even watch movies about Hell let alone the real thing,” Andros admitted guiltily to Jill. “So, I didn’t look. By the look on you face you probably shouldn’t have either.”

Jill looked at Sam who was unfazed. He guided her along toward the exit from Hell as he examined the ball of white Eddie had handed him. It sort of had a glow to it and the form gave a little when Sam squeezed it.

“I wonder what he did to deserve that,” Eddie asked no one in particular. “Like, did he fail to inspect a batch of faulty air bags? Was he the inventor of plate glass?”

“Ugh! That was gruesome,” Jill said as she tried to shake off the icky feeling. “How can you make fun of it?”

Sam handed the orb over to Eddie and put an arm around Jill. “It’s over, Jill. Eddie has the guy’s soul and everything else is gone forever. You can’t fight demons if you can still carry bad experiences with you when it’s over. You have to make jokes about it or it will eat at you later.”

The passage ended and Eddie pushed open a door to the outside. The others followed him out.

Sam knocked on the door as he exited. “Hey! I remember this! It’s the one used at the mine in Nevada!”

“You remembered,” said Eddie. “Yeah, I got tired of entering the old way and the door was there in the barn.”

Our heroes checked the cupboard in the guestroom part of the barn for something to eat. Not much was there. At least not much that was fresh.

So Eddie decided to fix a hot meal at his home in Indiana. He and Sam showed the others how the doors in the floor of the barn worked. Down through one door in Utah, up through a door in Indiana. They would save until later how to get themselves and their cars moved to where they wanted them.

Sam turned on his phone in the kitchen while Eddie and Jill planned breakfast. Eddie came across a bottle marked ‘Wogglebug’s Memory Pills.’ It reminded him that he needed to add Andros and Jill to the list of people to take these pills so they won’t forget his miracles like the one he performed in Hell.

Andros was in the library awhile until he poked his head into the kitchen to say, “It still works! Come see!”

The others followed him into the library to see two hedge apples on the library table. Andros leaned over them and seemed to be willing them to move. One rolled on top of the other and sat there.

“Where’d those come from?” asked Jill.

“My hall closet.”

“I think we need to know more than that,” urged Eddie.

“Oh, yeah.” Andros let the top fruit drop to the table. Jill went back to the kitchen to find something to clean the goo off of the table.

Andros continued. “Athena said I would remember the spells, but I didn’t know if that meant the spells would actually work. Well, the witches had an hour before they lost their skills, so I gave it an hour before calling up the hedge apples again, and it worked.”

“And they came from you hall closet?” asked Jill as she sprayed and wiped the table.

“Okay, remember the spider that attacked you? The spell book called for symbols woven from the spider’s webbing. I did that. I put one pattern on the closet floor and a mirror image on the ceiling and piled hedge apples in it because the written spell could call them. Anything I have in the closet, I can call up where ever I am at. I just called up the last two hedge apples that were in the closet.”

“So, can you call up anything else?” Jill asked.

“I suppose. If it fits in the closet, I can call it up. I just have to figure out how to change the wording of the spell for whatever it is. I need to practice. Maybe I can leave a weapon there and call it up. And if I could call it up, do I need to hold it or can I make it move on it’s own?”

Jill leaned closer. “So what other spells can you do?”

“Αντιστρέψτε αυτό το ξόρκι,” said Andros, and the hedge apples disappeared.

Andros grinned. “I can still reverse spells. Beyond that I don’t know yet. But you will be the first to know when I find out.”

The dragon tail problem that Castiel was concerned about in the trailer in Idaho was easily solved: Viktor realized it was out when he woke and he just reabsorbed it into his human body before he got up. Zeke apparently forgot about it when his father banged on the trailer door calling for volunteers to eat pancakes in the kitchen at the house.

Dean led the crew out the trailer door and to the house. Viktor lagged behind.

“Hurry, Viktor,” said Vladimir, “or Dean will eat them before we get there.”

Viktor was standing in front of the rose on the table, eyeing it intently. “The flower was watching us. It had eyes.”

Vladimir stepped back into the trailer. He was not going to doubt his friend. He poked his finger around in the flower.

“Careful! It might have a mouth, too, and bite you!”

“I can’t find anything, Viktor,” Vladimir said. “Come on, let’s eat. We can watch it together later.”

He followed Viktor out and pulled the door shut, looking back into the room. The pink rose was now facing the door. It had not been a second before. Vladimir decided to dwell on that later; right now he was hungry.


	37. Chapter 37

The Supernatural World of Vladimir and Viktor, Chapter 37

‘Whoa,’ thought Claire Novak as she and her three passengers arrived at the location of the Vam San. ‘Things have changed.’

She drove around the shell of a restaurant being built to get back to the residence. She noticed the second story coming into form on the Vam San’s left wing. Everywhere builders were busy. The girls in the back seat observed the commotion with great excitement. They had expected something much more dreary, a dwelling much more dilapidated. 

Claire left the girls in the lounge and crossed the hall into the kitchen to find something for them to eat. While she rummaged, Joseph came in the back door from working on the addition. He spied Claire right off.

“Hey, Claire! Where’s Hank?”

“Haven’t seen him,” Claire replied. “I was hoping you could tell me. Help me wrangle up something for the girls to eat.”

“Girls?” Joseph looked back into the lounge and that ended their conversation.

“Well, hi!” Joseph told the threesome in the lounge. “So Claire brought you here? Where are you from?”

The girls remained silent, looking towards the kitchen in hopes that Claire would return and end the awkwardness.

“What’s your names?” Joseph persisted.

They could muster up that much: “Angie,” “Liz,” “Carla.”

“You look a lot alike. Are you sisters?”

The girls nodded.

“Yeah. You’re all a lot younger than most vampires. Oh, yeah, would you like something to drink? Pop? Coffee? Beer? I’m getting ice water myself.”

Joseph slipped past Claire to pull cold drinks out of the cooler and a tray of ice cubes out of the freezer. He tossed a package of hot dogs to Claire and pushed a bag of potato chips across the counter.

Claire heard him passing out drinks and explaining the menu to the girls, carefully referring each one by her name. In the past she had only seen Joseph taunting his brother mercilessly. This friendly social side of him was new to her.

Joseph stuck his head back into the kitchen to say, “ketchup, mustard and pickle relish.” Then called into the lounge on his way outside, “Gotta get back to work. Nice meeting you.”

All three girls leaned forward to watch Joseph leave and then giggled among themselves.

Joseph the ice breaker. Claire called out to the girls to join her in the dining room and they ate hot dogs and chips while chatting about the Vam San.

That is where Monica found them not long later.

“More converts, Claire?” Monica asked.

“Yeah. Have you seen Hank?”

“No. Did he come with you?”

Claire shook her head. “No. He was supposed to come straight back here when he stopped at my place a couple of days ago. He didn’t. These girls each had drunk a vial of the blue solution that he gave them before I found them. I didn’t find him there. I told him he couldn’t go hunting with me and somehow he’s found out where I’m going. I’m pissed at him. I had told him to go home.”

Monica did some mental calculations. “Hmmm. We sent him out with four vials. He would have used one last night and he gave away three. He had better be back here by tonight or the effects of the blue solution will start wearing off.”

“Are we talking about Hank?” Anica entered the kitchen. “And who are these girls? New recruits?”

Claire nodded.

“Good, they’ve been fed.” Anica addressed the girls. “Let’s find you a room. Eventually you’ll each have your own if you agree to stay.”

Anica looked back. “Stay the night, Claire, dear. We’ll talk. At least hang around to make sure Hank gets back tonight. If he doesn’t we may have a problem.”

Then she motioned for the three sisters to follow her. “Come along, sweethearts, and we’ll discuss living arrangements. What are your names?”

Claire sat back. She would rather be back on the road instead of staying here with nothing to do, even if the people here were very nice to her.

But Joseph popped his head into the dining room. “So, you are staying the night. Good! How are you with a hammer and electric drill?”

Okay, Claire would not be bored. She should have known that among Joseph, Monica and Anica she would be given something to do.

Leaving the Overholt house in Idaho Falls, Zeke had an idea of something to entertain his friends from the East. “Hey! Wanna track a bigfoot?”

“Bigfoot? We know where they come fro..,” Vladimir started to say, until Dean gave him a sharp jab in the back. “Unggg! Uh, yeah, let’s track a bigfoot!”

Viktor covered his mouth to hide his amusement. His buddy had made a mistake for once, instead of him.

Zeke led his friends around the trailer and down the hill to a field. They walked sneakily as to get away without Castiel or his parents noticing. Sure enough, there were very large footprints along the field’s edge. “See?”

Dean leaned down and studied the tracks. He hadn’t seen them before. But Vladimir and Viktor had, and affirmed that Zeke had, indeed, showed them valid bigfoot footprints.

One could almost see the Keystone Cops racing maniacally through all four heads. They all glanced up the hill to see that no adults were watching, and then gleefully trotted off in the direction the foot prints pointed.

A hunt! Castiel didn’t need to know. If he did, he could just follow their tracks. Besides, Dean and Vladimir both had their smart phones.

The tracks lead along the snow-covered field, across a road in serious need of being plowed, across a field and into a woods. The tracks ran fairly straight among the trees, which Dean told the others meant the creature knew its way and had a specific destination in mind.

It did have a destination in mind: an isolated weather-worn log house on the other side of the woods that the foot prints led right to its front door. The foursome did not pause long before they trudged across the open yard and right up to the same door.

The name on the door read ‘S. Sasquatch.’ The boys eyed each other suspiciously. A bigfoot that advertises its presence? Dean tapped in the name in an phone listing app on his phone.

“I guess it’s true,” he said. “One with that last name in Missouri and one here in Idaho Falls.”

So, Dean boldly knocked on the door.

A burly, bearded man opened the door and looked past them down the lane, then in the direction of their tracks from the woods. He smiled when he saw Viktor nudge Vladimir and point at his feet. They were not in any way large feet.

“Come on in,” the man said. “My name is Simon. I’m afraid I’m not the Sasquatch you boys were looking for.” He walked over to the fireplace and tipped over the boots drying beside it. The soles were formed into the shape of two huge bare feet.

The great adventurers were crestfallen.

“Sorry, boys, I’m not the real thing. I wear this as a joke. But, don’t be too embarrassed. You aren’t the first to follow the tracks to my door. I usually offer drinks to them. Have a seat.

“They can’t stay long,” said Castiel in the doorway.

Dean looked down at his phone and back at Castiel with a confused expression.

Castiel leaned down to him and whispered, “Your phone was busy when I called it and I honed in on the signal.”

The door behind the host opened and a thin tall young woman peered around it at the guests. Her hair was wiry and her face and attire were of a gothic style. Her gaunt frame made it all look more surreal.

“I thought I heard people. I’ll heat up cocoa and coffee. That should be good for this cold weather.”

Dean noticed the odd look on Castiel’s face, so he followed when the angel excused himself and stepped outside. But Castiel wasn’t there when Dean himself was outside.

A moment later he was standing beside Castiel in the basement of the house. Castiel pointed at the barred steel door at the bottom of the steps the woman had come up. The single room was sparse of furniture, definitely nothing fragile, and the two small windows were sealed shut. The single light was inset into the ceiling.

“I saw the bars and part of the room behind her when she opened the door,” Castiel explained to Dean. “You would think a cellar would have something stored in it. It looks like a dungeon. What could she have been doing down here?”

“Well, we don’t need Sam here to know there is something suspicious about that woman,” said Dean. “Lets make it a short visit.”

Castiel and Dean returned to the front door and Castiel explained to Simon Sasquatch that they really couldn’t stay long.

“I understand,” said the woman. “It’s a full moon tonight. Be sure to stay indoors. Wouldn’t want a werewolf to get one of the kids.”

Dean suddenly felt the hair stand on the back of his neck.


	38. Chapter 38

The Supernatural World of Vladimir and Viktor, Chapter 38

In his apartment, Andros sat in front of his open hall closet and held up the two remaining hedge apples to Jill. Then he pointed out the woven sigils on the closet floor and the mirror-image sigils on the ceiling.

“Let’s try using something not exactly mentioned in the spell book,” he suggested. He laid a dagger and a gun in the closet.

He led Jill to the table in the kitchen and they sat there while he thought.

“The spell needs to recognize what is in the closet,” Andros said. “Can I call both weapons at once with a single spell? Or will I have to call them individually because they aren’t exact enough with each other? Can I call a dagger and accidentally get a hedge apple? And if I call a dagger, can I make it stab someone on its own or will I need to pick it up?”

Jill was getting into this. “And, since you made a hedge apple move, can you call a human out of the closet and make him move as you wish, too?”

“Interesting that you could fit in the closet. We’ll try it first with you,” Andros mused. 

“Uh, uh,” responded Jill. “Let’s try it with Sam first. I want to be able to see it. I’m not risking coming out like in ‘The Fly’ and have a dagger for an arm.”

Andros examined the closet. “Would Sam fit? Hand me that tape measure on the counter.”

They had forgotten that Sam came to Memphis with them. He walked in from the guest apartment across the hall.

“Uh, uh,” he said. “You won’t get me in there. Wait until Dean comes. He’ll do it. So many other supernatural beings have taken control over his body, so why not Andros, too?”

Speaking of Dean, he was still in his seven-year-old body back in the trailer in Idaho Falls with Castiel and his pre-adolescent friends. They had walked back to the Overholt home and checked in with Zeke’s parents. After a meal of roast beef, macaroni-and-cheese and green beans, and an hour of sledding down the hill behind the trailer, they retreated to the trailer.

The conversation turned to the creepy lady at Simon Sasquatch’s and her mention of being wary of werewolves tonight. Dean was texting his brother Sam in Memphis about it and Sam agreed to go online and research wolf attacks in their area.

The boys and Castiel settled into a game of Chinese checkers on the kitchen table. Castiel discovered that he had a talent of seeing several steps ahead of the game and was soon leading easily. But when the others expressed dismay over being so far behind in the game, he relented and backed off enough so that he would win by only one move.

Zeke took a break to rummage through the snacks. He settled on pretzels and Cheese Nips and turned to pull a two-liter drink out of the fridge.

He heard a scratching at the window beside him and turned to look. Large eyes on a dark furry face were looking back at him.

“Aaaah!” Zeke let the bottle slip to the floor and scrambled after it, while the others looked up from their game.

Then there was scratching at the door.

Zeke pointed the shaken bottle towards the door and turned the knob. In popped his dad, laughing, with a gorilla head under his arm.

“Very funny, I almost sprayed you with soda,” said Zeke as he toted the stuff to the game table. “You and Mom finally take a break from all the Hallmark Christmas movies?”

“Yeah, I had to get the trash out for tomorrow and spied this head in the garage. Couldn’t resist.”

A horrendous howl eminated from somewhere nearby and both Zeke and his father rushed to push the door shut. Both sat there wide-eyed.

“Werewolf!” Dean said to Castiel. “I’d know that sound anywhere.”

He got up to gather weapons out of his trunk and Castiel stopped him, saying, “Uh, uh. We’re staying in tonight.”

Zeke’s dad misunderstood and said, “No, wolves stay away from the city.” But he decided he should get back to the house. “Amy probably heard that. She’ll be worried.”

He didn’t look at all sure he wanted go back out into the open dark, but Castiel offered to go with him because the next morning was cold cereal breakfast day and the crew would need more milk.

They had not been in the house two seconds, when Dean, with a dagger and gun tucked in his pants, pulled on a heavy coat and prepared to slip out of the door.

“Castiel said ‘stay,’” Vladimir warned him. Viktor matched his stern expression.

“I’ll be back before he knows it,” said Dean as he closed the trailer door behind him. “But you stay here.”

When Castiel returned, the boys were eager to tattle on Dean. Castiel handed the milk to Zeke and marched back out the door.

Minutes later the door opened and Castiel threw Dean into the trailer by his coat collar, yelling, “I don’t care about how good your aim is. You aren’t tall enough and you aren’t strong enough.”

All four boys were antsy throughout the night, waiting for the next howl that did not come. None of them could sleep. Castiel sat quietly in the next room.

Dean messaged Sam about the werewolf and asked him to look up any animal attacks in the area.

Sam soon replied. “No wolf attacks specifically, but an animal attack during a full moon a few months ago near Idaho Falls. And the month before that across the state line in Teton, Wyoming an attack by an unidentified animal during a full moon. Want me to come?”

“No need,” Dean responded. “Cas and I can handle it. The boys will want to tag along. We may have to keep Vik from eating it. LOL.”

Sam showed the text to Jill. “LOL,” he said. “Dean never texts things like LOL.”

Jill suggested that Dean must be having a good time.

It was approaching noon when Claire reached her next destination: Rockford, Illinois. The sun was bright today, but more snow was due so she was eager to get the job done and get back to Sioux Falls.

This would be a gray-eyed vampire. It’s address was on the list of stops by Carpathia Transport trucks on their way to Chicago. She was relieved to see that the house was small. Only one resident was reported to be living there. And the natural slope of the hilly neighborhood kept it largely hidden from nearby houses. All seemed to be working in Claire’s favor.

She walked up to the front door with a folder of official-looking papers in hand. They were modified from Carpathia Transport papers that Jill’s crew obtained during their raid on the company. She knocked on the door and waited, but not for long.

A gray-eyed gentleman opened the door cautiously. “Yes? Who are you?”

“Hi! I’m Tabitha Payton. You should have gotten a letter from Carpathia Transport, saying I would be here. I have the paperwork needed to re-establish deliveries here after our unfortunate fire messed things up. Do you have a few minutes?”

“I didn’t get any letter, but come in anyway.”

Claire entered, keeping her eyes looking down at her papers. There can’t be any chance of eye-to-eye contact. She kept approaching as the vampire backed up until she was almost nose-to-nose.

“Here we go,” she said as she flipped a few pages around with her left hand for the vampire to see. At the same time she plunged a syringe full of blood from the corpse still in her truck.

“You little prick!” said the vampire, hunching over and vigorously rubbing the injection spot. He attempted to back up the wall behind him, but slid back down, too weak to make the effort.

Claire was ready with her dagger. She attempted to get behind him to make the first cut. The dagger was coated in the dead man’s blood, so all she needed was to get it to his throat and jab into it a few times. As she did, she looked into his eyes and, remembering Hank’s suggestion, counted in her head, ‘one, ‘two,’three...’

They circled each other, she taking jabs with her dagger and he with his swiping at her with his clawed hands. He began to chatter, trying to attract her attention, but it didn’t seem to work, until as one point she said out loud, “thirteen, fourteen,” to reinforce her concentration.

With a stuffed chair between them, the vampire straightened up and smiled.

“Ah! I know what you are doing!” he said and began the deadly dance again with her while chanting, “Bee-ay, Bay Bee-ee, bee Bee-ai, bicky-bye Bee-oh, boh Bicky-bye boh, bee you boo Bicky-bye bo boo, Cee-ay, Say Cee-ee, see Cee-ai, sicky-sigh...” until Claire lost her concentration.

“Hah! Got you!” The vampire had Claire mesmerized. “Thank you, Three Stooges.”


	39. Chapter 39

The Supernatural World of Vladimir and Viktor, Chapter 39

Castiel unlocked the trailer door and let the boys swarm out, checking to be sure each one was bundled appropriately for the winter weather. They were beyond excited because they were going to search for werewolf tracks. The howling they heard the previous night promised them that one could be found nearby. Castiel followed the group down the hill behind the trailer.

They did find werewolf tracks, as Dean identified them. They saw the ‘bigfoot’ tracks from the previous day, and on top of them were the other tracks going in the opposite direction. Dean and Castiel thought it was strange that both tracks followed the exact same route, but in reverse. Dean surmised that the werewolf tracks originated from the Sasquatch house and would probably circle around and return there from another direction. So he led the group to follow the tracks directly to Simon Sasquatch’s.

“Shouldn’t there be no tracks if the werewolf had been held in the dungeon,” Castiel asked.

“Maybe she got free,” Dean guessed. “We’ll find out when we get there.”

The house told them an entirely different story when they arrived.

The door was open and, while the werewolf tracks left the house as Dean assumed, they did not return there. But blood outside the threshold did suggest that the creature escaped the dungeon if it was even in it in the first place.

Inside the house, Simon’s body laid gutted by the animal. Three young heads popped in to look before Dean had a chance to suggest they stay outdoors. So the whole squad ventured towards the steps down to the dungeon.

Dean and Castiel stopped short partway down. They saw the broken bars and the woman’s body ripped up and strewn up the steps. Vladimir climbed up the wall to see the gore over Dean and Castiel and Viktor poked out his wings to follow suit.

“Well, it’s obvious now that the woman wasn’t the werewolf,” remarked Castiel.

“My bad,” offered Dean. “So who was the dungeon built for?”

“What the hey!” exclaimed Zeke from the top of the steps.

Vladimir slid down the wall and Viktor pulled in his wings and lowered to the step below.

“Oops!”

“Okay, time to talk,” said Castiel and pushed the crowd up the steps and out into the snowy yard.

“I knew this was coming,” he mumbled to himself. He led Zeke apart from the others.

“Ezekial,” Castiel said to the boy. “You’ve just learned that we are a lot different than most people you know. We generally keep the fact from most people and someone had the dumb idea that it would be wise to keep it from you, too. It is time to come clean before we go any further.

“Vladimir, tell your friend what it is you can do that most people cannot.”

Vladimir stepped forward and scratched his head a bit before coming up the words. “Um, you just saw that I can climb walls. I can walk on the ceiling, too. I can hypnotize people with my eyes and I have sharp teeth and claws that I can poke out.” He extended the claw on one finger as an example.

“Perfect,” Castiel said. “Your turn, Viktor.”

Victor stepped forward. “I normally have a dragon body that I can switched to. Can I go full dragon, Castiel?”

Castiel nodded, and Viktor popped his wings back out, then his tail and so on until he was fully a young dragon in a boy’s snow gear. He spit a little fire and smoke and then rolled up against Vladimir and made soft growling noises to show Zeke that he was safe to be around.

Dean did not wait for Castiel’s prompt. He packed a snowball and told Zeke, “If I shoot or throw anything it hits what I want it to, even if the target moves.” He threw the snowball in Zeke’s direction and it curved to hit Vladimir in the butt instead. Zeke was in awe.

“I know what you can do,” Zeke told Castiel. “I remember when you visited me that day and I felt better. You heal people.”

Castiel nodded impassively.

“And he can make things disappear and pop up somewhere else, even people,” added Vladimir.

Zeke thought for a moment and then one side of his mouth slowly moved up. “So.....you’re like superheroes! My friends are superheroes!”

“So let’s go find the werewolf,” suggested Dean, and the group headed in the direction that the tracks led.

Gray eyes. Hank was looking in the mirror in his motel room. The blue solution had begun to wear off and he would need to get back to St. Louis to get more. Until then he would need to be careful about being in the sun.

Like today. The sun was bright and all of the snow only intensified the effect on his now-sensitive skin. Hank bundled himself in his hooded winter coat and a scarf and gloves and headed outdoors. The vampire’s home was not far away. He would walk there.

Hank saw Claire’s empty car outside of the house. He was sure she could take care of herself, but he was going anyway, just for assurance. He walked faster as he approached the front door.

He decided not to knock. After all, the goal was to kill the vampire, not reason with it. He chose to enter by a less-than-subtle means. He picked up a cement urn on the porch and shoved it through the nearest window, following it in with his body.

The vampire entered the room to see what was going on and Hank was immediately on him with his hands around the vampire’s neck. The creature’s shirt was off and Hank noticed the badly rotted look of the skin on its belly. Claire obviously had something to do about it. That was good. The creature was weakened, giving Hank an advantage.

“Where is she?” Hank demanded.

The vampire smiled. “You mean Claire Novak from Sioux Falls?” he taunted.

Both vampires were face-to-face and eye-to-eye, both struggling to use their power to mesmerize to gain an advantage.

“Where is she?” Hank insisted again.

“Oh, I have her locked up somewhere.”

Hank slashed the claws of one hand across the vampire’s face, and the other slashed back with his own claws. And during the fight, Hank glanced around the house for a locked door, but found nothing. But, Claire was “locked up somewhere.”

But as they passed one window he looked out and notice the padlocked shed outside with a path worn to it through the snow. That had to be where Claire was.

Hank pull up the hood on his coat and ducked under the vampire’s swing. He grabbed it around its waist and lifted it up, swung around and shoved it through the window.

Once outside, Hank forced the vampire away from the house and into the fiery sunlight. As they slashed at each other, Hank worked at forcing the other beyond the shed and into the wide open lot next door to better expose it to the sun.

The vampire recognized its dire situation and clawed at the buttons of Hanks coat. It finally was able to dig under Hank’s coat and push its head inside, then its body. As they dug at each other underneath, the vampire got an arm up into the hood and pulled it back. Now they each had control of half of the coat.

They tumbled down into the snow, with Hank on top, allowing him to burrow into the coat and pull it away from the vampire’s face and chest. Worn out and exposed to the sun, the vampire’s face and exposed skin began to burn until the vampire could no longer struggle.

Hank noticed the burning sensation on his arm and looked to see his hand turning red, then gray. The blue solution had worn off completely and he was now in danger of sharing the fate of the vampire.

Hank tugged on the coat, trying to get it off of the vampire’s arm. But its weight on the coat held it down. Hank was now too weak to pull it out from under the creature and he was beginning to feel the burn himself. He would have to abandon the coat.

He looked back at the shed; it would be locked. He would have to run for the house.

So, Hank got up and started to run. The searing heat was painful and drained his strength. He was only able to go a few steps toward the house until he could only stagger about, then fall into the snow, unable to exert any more strength.

He laid there and watched one hand turn into ash and two of his fingers drop off. Then his vision began to grow dark. He whole body burned like it was on fire.

He felt a deep sadness come over him as he thought, ‘I’ll never see Claire again.’

It all went black. The pain began to subside until all he felt was a line of sharp pain where a tear cut a path down his cheek. ‘Will she even know I was here?”


	40. Chapter 40

The Supernatural World of Vladimir and Viktor, Chapter 40

 

The werewolf posse in Idaho Falls had reached the trailer. They intended to continue following the paw prints, but Zeke was saying he wanted to get his rifle to help. It was fine that Vladimir and Viktor planned to walk beside him to guard him against the werewolf, but he wanted to be able to protect himself.

The others understood the logic in that and Dean suggested that Castiel simply pop it out from Zeke’s bedroom. Castiel foresaw more potential problems if Zeke’s parents became aware that the rifle was snuck out behind their backs.

So, Castiel and Zeke entered the house. As they passed Zeke’s parents watching “The Littlest Angel” from the couch, his dad asked what they were up to now.

“Oh, we’re still tracking the wolf,” said Zeke. “I’m going to get my rifle.”

“Okay. Be back by suppertime. Your mom’s making goulash.”

As they continued their quest, Zeke was telling his friends some of the wise suggestions his dad had given him while on their hunting outings.

“If you are in bear country,” he said, “always take someone with you who runs slower than you do.”

And, “Hey! Speaking of werewolves, what’s the difference between when a wolf devours a meal and when a werewolf does. Afterwards, the werewolf takes out a toothpick to clean his teeth.”

The monologue was interrupted to check out a cow along the way that had been killed and its heart dug out. The cow had definitely struggled. There was blood all along the fence it laid against and tufts of the werewolf’s hair were caught in the links of the fence.

Dean collected together the tufts of werewolf hair from the fence and tied them together. He offered to give them to Zeke to stop with the jokes. Zeke agreed and gleefully snatched up the prize.

Soon the paw prints turned into foot prints. The footprints finally led to a house and to a window.

“That makes sense,” Dean said. “What werewolf carries house keys?”

They knocked on the door and the man answering it said, “Excuse the toothpick, I had beef heart for lunch.” He let the group enter.

Vladimir and Viktor eyed Zeke respectfully.

Castiel began the interrogation. “Do you know Simon Sasquatch?”

“Yeah, I’m over there pretty often.”

“Did you know two people in his house were killed by a wild animal last night?”

“No!” The man looked around the room like he was looking for something he had misplaced.

“We followed the tracks to here.” Castiel proceeded. “We know you’re a werewolf. The tracks say so.”

The man stood quietly, not giving eye contact, then finely spoke, “I wondered why I wasn’t still in the cage. Or why I didn’t recall the trip back home.”

He collapsed into a chair and closed his eyes. “What now?”

Castiel diagnosed the situation. “Well, two humans and a cow died. A court would not be able to convict you since human society does not officially acknowledge werewolfism. If you had been in your animal form when we found you, we would have killed you on the spot. But you were not.

“We cannot let you stay here and live. But there is a place where werewolves monitor each other where you can agree to stay and we will let the issue drop.”

The man looked up hopefully. “There’s a place that can help me? Yeah, I’ll go!”

Castiel punched buttons on his phone and spoke. “Garth? Do you have room for another convert to your family? Good. We will be there soon.”

The posse marched home with Zeke in the middle swinging his rifle with the werewolf hair tied to the muzzle. ‘Peter and the Wolf’ played in Dean’s head.

Eddie was at the house when they arrived and Vladimir and Viktor excitedly drug Zeke up to him to show off his trophy. After praising the posse’s achievement, he motioned Castiel to the truck where the Christmas presents were that needed to be snuck into the house.

“Claire?” A slap. “Claire!” A shaking of the shoulders and a splash of cold water on the face. Finally Claire came out of her trance.

She shivered from the cold and looked around the small shed she was in, then into the faces of Sheriff Mills and Anica Tomesku. They helped her up and led her to the house where she could get warm. The wind and additional snow had covered any tracks between the shed and house except those made by the women.

“Where’s the vampire?” Claire asked as she warmed. “A gray-eye mesmerized me in the house and must have taken me to the shed.”

“We didn’t see any,” offered her mother, the sheriff.

“How’d you find me?”

“Anica’s car was reported outside a motel in town and Hank wasn’t with it, so we came to the address on your list. He isn’t here either.”

“Any footprints outside? If no one is in the house, there has to be tracks leading away from the house.”

“Sorry, dear,” said Anica. “The wind last night blew the snow around and there aren’t any tracks. All we can be sure of is that the vampire didn’t drive away. Your car is blocking the drive.”

“I want to walk around the outside of the house anyway,” said Claire. “I might find some clue out there as to which direction he might have gone.”

Claire bundled up to go outside. “That Hank! Still following me. He’s getting to be a nuisance. I told him to go home and he didn’t.”

“Something else I noticed though,” said Jody. “A front window was broken in with a cement decoration. And a window facing the shed was broken outward. That sounds like a third person was involved. It could have been Hank.”

“Yeah, that could be. Still, I’m pissed at him. Let me gripe and whine a while longer before I reason this out.”

Jody Mills smiled as she and Anica followed Claire out into the yard. The broken windows offered no more clues, so the women searched through the snow further from the house until Claire noticed a bit of heavy material sticking out of the snow a long distance away.

She leaned over the spot and pulled on the cloth, revealing a coat sleeve. Claire removed snow until she uncovered the whole coat with no head or arms sticking out from it but clearly part of a torso inside it.

Jody and Anica joined her as she exposed the rest of the victim. Opening the coat showed that the chest and abdomen had begun to burn away, but either the sun had set or the snow blew over it before it decayed further.

“He was laying on his coat rather than being fully in it,” Claire noted. “See? It was open. And most of the buttons were clawed off. But that could have been a wild animal later on.”

As Claire folded the legs up on top of the remains of the chest, the fragile bones popped and crackled. She pulled the coat up around the mess and the three women grabbed the edges of the coat to haul it to Claire’s car. They put it in the trunk with the other body. The trunk reeked and she decided it was time to get back home and disposed of its contents.

Anna looked over the two corpses in the mortuary in Sioux Falls. She noted that the vampire was minus its shirt and that, although most of the body had burned, the abdomen had rotted because of the injection of the dead man’s blood. There was a wallet and keys in the pants pockets. But it was the coat that had her puzzled.

“Jody, remember Hank’s coat when he was here?” Anna asked. “This vampire was wrapped in Hank’s coat.”

She searched through the coat pockets and pulled out a second wallet. She opened up the wallet and showed the driver’s license to Claire and the others. “This is Hank’s wallet.”

“Then Hank was there,” Anica noted. “So, what happened? Where did he go?”


	41. Chapter 41

The Supernatural World of Vladimir and Viktor, Chapter 41

It was Christmas Eve evening and the four boys were in their beds, with heads at the foot, listening to Eddie lying prone in the next room talking in Enochian to Castiel. Actually it was apostle of the Lord, Timothy, speaking through Eddie to angel of the Lord, Castiel.

It killed some time as the excited boys tried to wind down enough to sleep. They all knew there were presents currently hidden somewhere to be opened in the morning.

They had been talking about how none of them really believed there was a Santa Claus, but it was always good to not let adults in on that or one would start getting socks and undershorts for gifts.

“Yeah,” pointed out Dean in his experienced tone. “Grown-ups never get toys. I wanna motorcycle. That’d be a great toy!” He rolled over on his back and imitated revving up a cycle.

Eddie popped out of his trance. He could not resist explaining that Santa used to be a real person, Saint Nicholas, who was a bishop in a country in the Middle East. In the dead of night he would secretly leave gifts for poor families and people he had heard were in need of help. And after his death people kept the idea of Santa Claus alive as an excuse to give secret gifts, too, on one official day each year.

Eddie laid back and fell asleep again, and Castiel and Timothy continued their conversation.

“Hey! Talk in English!” Dean called out to them. “We want to hear!”

So, the angel and the apostle continued their conversation in English. The boys could not believe how dry the subject matter was. Zeke hung his head over the end of the bed, rolled onto his back with his tongue hanging out, and jerked on an imaginary noose around his neck.

“Hey, Cas!” Dean finally said. “Tell us how you guarded the Holy Family when Jesus was born.” Zeke’s parents had enrolled him in bible studies at their church and Eddie had been reading Genesis and the Gospels of Jesus to Vladimir and Viktor, so they perked up immediately.

“Yeah! Did you have to kill bad guys?” Vladimir asked.

Castiel thought a bit about how to explain his spiritual self to the kids, but finally decided that all of them had enough Christian training to grasp it. “Well, my battalion killed many of the demons whose interest was to foil God’s plan to speak directly to His chosen people. I personally drove my Angel blade through many of them. Until then the legions of Satan were allowed unbridled license to interfere in the affairs of humans.”

Viktor was totally not getting all of it. “Angel blade? Demons? Satan?”

“Daddy hasn’t explained the angels part to us yet,” Vladimir said. “But he talked about God’s plan. God’s chosen people were the Jewish tribes and God decided that they would understand if He told them more about how important they were to Him and more exactly what He expected of them So Jesus was born and as he grew up, Christ his spirit started speaking through him. Jesus and Christ is like daddy and Timothy, except Christ understood God’s mind better than any other soul.”

“Good for Eddie,” said Timothy. “Christ was to teach God’s message. But there were many souls enlightened enough to help. In fact, there were many souls incarnated to become disciples to Jesus, but when the time, several of them were not ready. I wasn’t old enough until after he died and rose from his death, so I joined the apostles who he taught and sent in pairs across the world to preach. I left my home in Qumran and was sent east into Parthia then north into Armenia. I never saw my home again.”

“I think I can clarify the angels part,” Castiel said. “When God created all things physical and spiritual, He made angels without minds of their own to keep both realms functioning according to His will. Then he made souls with minds of their own to share in the marvels of His creation. Angels were not intended to defy God’s will, but some of them did. We say they fell from God’s grace and those that fell were given new names. Lucifer led the fallen angels; now we call him Satan and the fallen angels we call demons.

“We angels were to allow some demons to possess some people whose souls agreed to the possessions so that Jesus could demonstrate his power over demons. Then once we allowed Satan to approach him to try to tempt him from God’s will. Of course Jesus won the contest. After that the demons left Jesus alone and we had little to do.”

Timothy snatched back the conversation. “So I was raised in an Essene commune near Qumran. We were mindful of the prophecies of the Jewish prophets and paid close attention as Jesus of Nazareth complied with every prophesy. I listened to his sermons and became an ardent follower. So, when the apostles were gathered for their mission, I was there.”

“Wow!” exclaimed Zeke. “So they say Jesus is to come again. How soon will that be?”

“I do not know,” admitted Timothy. “Not anytime soon, I think. The apostles should be a part of the return and my partner did not incarnate when Eddie was born. Some signs of a return are always here, but never all of them. That is up to God.”

“Chuck didn’t tell me anything about it,” chimed in Dean.

“Who’s Chuck?” asked Zeke.

“God appeared to Dean in a human form and told him His name was Chuck. It was the only way he and his brother could have related to the Creator,” said Castiel. “Actually, I think Dean could not have pronounce God’s actual name so He let Dean’s mind pick it.”

“Kinda like Amazing Bob, creator of another universe,” added Timothy. “Of course that is not His real name.”

“Amazing Bob?” Zeke asked.

“Too much information,” Castiel said to Timothy. “Vladimir and Viktor can tell you about Amazing Bob, Zeke.”

“Does Timothy talk to Christ?” Dean wondered.

“There is some communication,” offered Timothy. “After two thousand years, there is little need.”

“So do you know what Christ is up to now?” Dean asked.

“The last I was aware of,” said Timothy, “Christ was active in Purgatory earlier this year. It was a big deal noticed by many souls here in Heaven because it started a new migration into Heaven.”

Castiel’s phone rang, ending the conversation. The call was from Zeke’s parents asking when Castiel and Eddie were coming over.

“Come out of it Eddie, we are needed over at the house,” said Castiel. He left it at that. The kids were not supposed to know what was going on, so he just stood there looking off to the side.

Eddie noticed it when he rose up. “Oh yeah, that. We’ll be back. You kids get ready to sleep and we’ll be back in an hour or so.”

As they left the trailer Castiel looked directly at Dean as he announced, “Stay...in...the trailer.”

Of course the moment the door shut, Dean slipped out of bed and across the trailer to the door to peek out through the slats. “Mr. Overholt opened the door. Cas and Eddie are taking packages out of the truck. That one’s big. I hope it’s mine.”

“Presents?!” The others wanted to see, too, but Dean waved them back to the beds, then continued his play-by-play until Eddie closed up the truck and followed Castiel with a box of something into the Overholt house.

“Mom will probably talk them into watching one of her Christmas movies,” moaned Zeke.

“Well that last box had alcohol in it. They’ll probably sit and drink and stay up late,” said Dean. He continued watching the house just in case.

“I can’t sleep,” whined Viktor.

“Me, neither,” said Vladimir. He got out his smart phone and searched YouTube for something to share with the others. Pretty soon strains of ‘Baby shark, doo doo doo doo’ permeated the trailer. The three simulated the hand motions that went with the song.

Dean ignored them. He continued to watch the house from the trailer door.

Later came ‘Skibidi au pa pa, skibidi au pa pa pa pa...’

“Should we be watching this?” asked Viktor.

“I dunno,” replied Vladimir.

“I think its okay,” added Zeke. “It’s just really, really...strange...”

“Hey! Lemme go!” shouted Dean. 

The others sat up with a start and looked towards the kitchen to see a long-eared green creature pulling a bag down over Dean’s head and body. A goblin! It watched them carefully as it struggled to close the opening of the bag around young Dean who was struggling just as hard to get out of it.

Viktor instantly flew from the beds with wings unfurled to come to Dean’s aid, but just that soon the goblin and the bag with Dean in it disappeared.

“Nice try, Viktor,” Vladimir said as he and Zeke joined him in the kitchen.

They looked around as if something might give them a clue as to what to do next.

“It’s that flower!” Viktor exclaimed. “It’s been watching us. It called the goblin here!”

Viktor picked up the pink rose from its bottle and started furiously pulling off its petals. That left a stem and, at its top, two crab-like stalked eyes looking back and forth among the three boys, and maybe a mouth.

“Burn it, Viktor,” Vladimir demanded.

Viktor burned the remainder with a flash of fire from his mouth. The black carbon ash crumbled and fell to the floor. He scooped up the petals in his clawed dragon hand and they met the same fate.

“What will we tell daddy?” he asked solemnly.


	42. Chapter 42

The Supernatural World of Vladimir and Viktor, Chapter 42

“What do you mean ‘a goblin got him?’” Sam shouted over the phone. “You took him there to protect him from goblins!”

Sam was in Andro’s room with Jill watching another test. This time a mouse in a cage was in Andros’ sigiled closet. Andros called up the mouse and it appeared alive on the kitchen table they were at. Andros tried to cause the mouse to follow commands but it would not, proving that while he could move inanimate objects about, things with a mind, at least as complex as a mouse’s, defied his commands.

“Maybe a bug,” Andros suggested as he put the cage onto the table and the mouse into the cage.

Jill looked around the room and pointed to the snow on the window sill. “Not until spring, unless you want to visit a bait shop,” she said.

“Did you see it happen, Castiel?” Sam continued on the phone. “Okay, you were at the house at the time and couldn’t follow. Dammit! What’s Eddie say? Okay, zap me and Dean’s Baby over there and we’ll do that.”

Sam waved towards Andros and Jill, then disappeared.

“A goblin got someone?” Andros asked Jill.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Dare we try a cat next? We could use a cat around here. Let’s go to the animal shelter.”

At the Vam San in St. Louis, Joseph answered his phone. The call was from Sheriff Jody Mills in Sioux City.

“Joseph,” Jody said. “I have more news on your brother. I’m afraid it’s not good. I just called you from his cell phone. The sheriff at Rockford called me since they knew we were looking at the place where we found Claire. Someone found the phone there. It was found behind the house buried in the snow and someone’s dog dug it up.”.

“The Rockford police found an unidentifiable burned body without a coat buried in a deep snow drift. They checked the DNA and said it doesn’t match the homeowner’s. That would be the vampire they don’t know that we hauled away in Claire’s car. They compared it with the vampire’s belongings in the house.

“We convinced them to let us have the phone and the human remains because it involved our lost person search. The phone was damaged, but we were able to retrieve phone numbers, including yours. We need Hank’s DNA for a match on the human remains. Can you do that?”

Anica was beside Joseph by then asking him if that was Sheriff Mills.

Joseph nodded. “They think that found Hank’s remains. They need DNA for a match.”

“Go to your brother’s room, dear, and grab some of his unwashed clothes. That should be enough.” Anica told him. “I want to talk with Jody.”

“I overheard what you told Joseph, honey. Sad news! I’m sure Joseph will want to deliver what you asked for. It that okay? You’re a gem, Jody. If it turns out to be Hank’s remains, could we pass them on to Professor Wogglebug to examine when you are finished? He made some of what was in Hank’s body and eyes. Maybe he can learn something we missed from what is left.

“Then we’ll have his cremated remains here for a funeral service and keep them in an urn in his room. I’m not ready to accept he’s is gone.”

It was late Christmas Eve when Sam drove up to the Overholt house. He and Eddie told the Overholts a story about how Dean’s mother was doing poorly in a hospital in Salt Lake City and Sam, Dean’s ‘uncle ,’ was taking Dean with him on the way there. Sam had to go and Eddie would hold on to Dean’s presents.

Sam thanked the Overholts profusely for their hospitality. Dean was ‘already asleep in the car’ Sam told them, but he promised to bring the boy back later to say good bye formally.

The boys were watching from the trailer. Vladimir noted that they needed to so something to protect themselves if another goblin came for them. The other two nodded in agreement.

Baby disappeared after leaving the Idaho Falls city limits. Castiel had sent Dean’s Baby back to the bunker and Sam to his room in Memphis.

Sam smelled ham cooking up the hall and called out to the others, “I’m back!”

“Good!” said Jill. “We’re having ham and green beans and red potatoes.”

“And Christmas cookies!” added Andros, popping his head out from Jill’s doorway.

Sam took an unusually long time to reach Jill’s apartment and he had a puzzled look on his face when he looked in. “Andros, what do you have in your apartment? There are dozens of tiny spiders crawling in under the door.”

“Spiders?” Andros followed Sam back to Andros’ apartment. Jill checked the oven and then hurried after them.

The spiders were coming from the stairwell and into Andros’ apartment. When Andros opened the door their eyes followed the arachnid parade to the kitchen table, up its legs and to a cage with a now-cocooned mouse in it and strands of webbing strewn about the cage.

Sam looked sternly at Andros and Jill like a father about to scold his unruly children. “What did you guys do?”

“Nothing,” Andros said defensively. “I called it from the closet and it worked. But nothing odd happened.” He went to get a broom and dustpan.

Jill pulled out the mouse mummy from the cage and laid it on the table, then took her pocketknife and cut it open. The spiderlings changed course and climbed about the cocooned mouse, feasting on the goo that seeped out.

Andros sat down and huffed. “Okay,” he said. “No calling anything live from the closet.”

“I wonder if it was large enough to attract one of Arachne’s black widows.” said Jill. You’d better be ready to use your spell to send it back just in case.”

Andros swept up as many of the spiders as he could and dumped them from the dustpan out the window and into the freezing cold. Jill was right behind him and flung the mouse carcass out the window, too. Then all three of them glanced about the apartment as if they expected a monster spider to pop up at any time.

“Enough of this creepiness,” Jill finally said. “Let’s go to my place and eat and enjoy the evening.”

Andros looked back as they headed out into the hallway, then turned back. He grabbed the last two hedge apples from the closet and placed them onto the table. “I know that’s not how it works,” he said as he closed the door, “but I feel better now.”

Jill fussed over the ham while the men set the table. When she presented the ham, they were already seated, munching on Christmas cookies with milk.

Andros sat quietly with his eyes closed for a minute, then finally raised his glass of milk. “Peace and happiness to our families and friends. And I’m thankful we didn’t try that test on a cat.”

“Or Dean,” said Sam. “I wouldn’t want to put him through that again.”

“Speaking of Dean,” said Andros, “were you talking about Dean getting taken by a goblin before you disappeared?”

Back in Idaho Falls, way after midnight, Castiel and Eddie were leaving the Overholt house and crossing over to the darkened trailer.

“I’m surprised the boys are actually asleep. I expected every light in the trailer to be on since Dean was taken,” said Eddie. “Those boys are fearless.”

They crept quietly into the trailer and Castiel reached for the light switch as Eddie walked into the darkness.

Eddie felt a string across his arm and then walked right through a couple more of them. This triggered a racket of falling metal and glass objects all through the trailer. A long flame stretched towards him from the back of the trailer and he heard a monstrous roar as a large dark object came flying straight at him.

Castiel flipped the light switch and the light revealed a small dragon a few feet from Eddie’s face. It suddenly changed shape and Viktor landed in Eddie’s arms.

“Hi, Daddy!” said Viktor. “We rigged the place to protect Zeke from the goblins.”

“I see that,” said Eddie as he looked across the burnt criss-crossed twine and the fallen silverware and cups to which they were attached. At the other end Vladimir and Zeke stared back in awe that their planned had worked so well. If it hadn’t been Castiel and Eddie, some goblin would have been chomped to bits.

Eddie carried his son across the trailer and plopped him down on the bed. “Well you don’t have to protect yourselves now. Castiel and I are here and we’ll keep watch. So go to sleep.”

“Oh, good!” said Zeke, happy not to have to stay in the bed. “‘Cause I have to go pee!”


End file.
